beelzebub 🦇

"What was the deal, Prior? Say it back to me."

"No, I remember the deal—"

"—Say it."

"But I—"

"—Say it, or I'm taking a hot shower, without you, and using up all the hot water."

Peter sighed, his shoulders falling in resignation. "Every time I come home late from work, because Liz was pushing me around, you get to... you know."

"No, I don't."

Peter pouted at you. It was late, he was tired from work, tired of his fathers bullshit, tired of running around doing errands for Liz. But, he could never be tired of you, even if you were a pain in the ass, no pun intended. He swallowed, working up the courage to say it.

"It's just us. Me and you. You can say it, I know you can."

Peter huffed. "P-peg. Peg me. When I'm late, you get to peg me."

"Aw, that's a good boy, Peter."

Peter blushed, your sarcasm and mock-praise going right to his cock, currently still hidden away in his dark brown work slacks. He swallowed, the audible little gulp piercing the silence between you two. "Be nice," He whispered, folding his arms over his chest.

"Be a good boy, and I'll think about it." You countered, setting your shiny new strap-on on the mattress.

He inhaled sharply. Peter's eyes flickered between your face and the toy, his cheeks burning up. He swallowed again. You knew how to push his buttons, and it just wasn't fair. "Okay," He said, slowly taking his jacket off. "Okay. I'll be good. I promise. I'll be good, baby." He had to be good. He needed to be good. There was nothing more he loved in the world than being good for you, and being told how good he was being.

You smiled, baring your teeth. Taking his jacket, then his shirt off had exposed that pretty neck of his, and you wanted nothing more than to sink your canines into it, and taste his skin under your tongue. "I know, baby. Get all the way undressed for me, okay? Then, get on your hands and knees."

Peter hesitated, his teeth digging into his bottom lip. His eyes were wide, like a dog begging for a treat.

"What is it, baby?" You asked, a note of concern edging into your voice. You'd set this up weeks before, with boundaries and a safe word, but still, you loved Peter, and you'd hate to actually hurt his feelings.

"I want to see you," He whispered. "I - I want to see your face. As you, um. You know." He said, vaguely gesturing to your crotch.

"As I fuck you?" You asked, a faint blush of your own spreading across your cheeks. Jesus fucking Christ, he could be so sweet. "As I slip my cock into your pretty little—"

"—yes!" Peter laughed. He rubbed his cheek, as if that would make his fluster vanish. Indeed, as he took his shirt off, you saw it only spread further down his chest, dusting his lovely tits in a handsome shade of pink. "That. All of that. Is that okay? Please?"

"Well," you said, pursing your lips in thought. "Since you asked so nicely... I suppose that'd be alright."

Peter Prior broke into a giddy grin, like a kid at the candy store. "Thank you, baby. Thank you."

He sat on the bed you two shared, leaning back to tug his pants off. You watched him, a warm fondness seeping into your heart. It couldn't be helped, really. Peter was a sweet idiot, a kind and surprisingly needy man. He was perfect, in his own way. As he sat up again, you caught his lips in an achingly tender kiss, and he melted right into it. His lips were warm and soft against yours, and you somehow found the taste of the burnt coffee lingering on his tongue endearing. You had to pull away from him, though. Kissing him was a dangerously addictive hobby, and you had a job to do. Peter whined as you separated, trying to chase your lips. Needy boy, you thought.

"Nuh uh. Get comfortable." You said as you grabbed the bottle of lube from the nightstand. He obeyed easily, settling on the pillows and biting his lip. You smiled as you pulled the strap-on on, knowing that you wouldn't have patience to do it later. "How about this, baby? Since it's your first time, you can come as many times as you want - but you cannot touch yourself."

Peter gasped. "I, um - okay. Yeah. I can do that. I think." He said, licking his lips. He ran a hand through his brown hair, mussing it up even more than it already was.

You beamed. "I know you can, baby." You purred as you crawled between his legs. "Can you lift your legs up for me, pretty boy?"

Peter obeyed again, lifting his legs up to his chest, and holding them there for you. "I love you." He whispered, his usually blue eyes black with desire as his pupils dilated. He hadn't been kidding when he said he wanted to see your face - it was an anchor for him, that familiarity, that love that your face held for him.

"I love you, too." You promised. You poured some lube onto your fingers, warming it up for Peter. Everything for Peter. You traced a finger around his tight, pink, puckered hole, and he shuddered.

"Oh, god." He whispered, leaning his head back. The sensation was so much more intense than he had even imagined, and it would be so easy to sink into the feeling, and get lost in it, but he wanted to look at you.

"Mm?" You asked, pretending not to listen. You met his eyes, winked, pursed your lips - then spat on his hole. He let out a choked moan of surprise, his eyes wide. His cock twitched against his stomach, already beyond hard. Your fingers spread the slick mixture of lube and saliva over his skin, teasing his rim around and around, over and over, until he started squirming underneath you.

"Baby, please—"

"Please, what?" You asked, pressing the pad of your finger against his hole. Not enough to push it in, but just enough to tease with some pressure, a promise of what was to come.

Peter whimpered, his cheeks so red that you thought steam might start pouring out of his ears. "Put it - put it in me, already-!" He gasped at his own words, hardly believing himself. He didn't dirty talk very often, in truth, it took quite a lot of desperation on his end for filth to start spilling from his mouth - all that to say, you knew this was going to be fun.

You grinned. "That's all you had to say, baby. Thank you." You purred. Of course, you obliged him. Slowly, you eased a fingertip in.

Peter had told you once - while you were both drunk on the couch, and his face was just as red as it was now - that he had fingered himself before, curious what all the fuss was about. Back then, he said he hadn't understood it. Of course, back then, he was a teenager in a bathroom, without any lube or prep.

Peter gasped, his tight hole clenching around your finger like a vice.

"Relax, baby." You murmured. You pressed kisses to his inner knees and thighs, and that seemed to soothe him. You pumped your finger in and out, slowly, gently coaxing his body to relax. You also added more lube as needed, wanting to make this as pleasurable as possible for him - for entirely selfish reasons on your end. His thighs trembled, and the deep breaths that made his chest flex and warp revealed a small puddle of glistening pre-cum, leaking from his reddened cock.

"I love you." He whispered again, his fingers digging into the soft, pale flesh of his thighs, eyes staring at you with an intensity that threatened to swallow you whole.

"I love you, too." You answered. You bit your lip, then pulled your finger out of him to grab a pillow. "Lift your hips - there you go. Is that better?"

Peter nodded. "Thank you." He whispered, chewing on his bottom lip.

Back to work, then. You resumed your former task of fucking him on your finger, until his soft little mewls, and the way his hole eagerly accepted your finger convinced you that he was ready for a second finger. "You're so tight." You whispered reverently, feeling the resistance around your digits.

"That's - that's what he said—" Peter managed to get out before a moan escaped his throat. "Fuck - fuck, right there—" He squirmed as your fingers brushed over his prostate.

"Hm, here?" You asked, feigning ignorance as your fingers began to bully that spot inside of him that made him convulse and shudder.

He nodded quickly, his lips parted in a silent moan. "Please - please, baby, fuck, it's so much—"

"Too much?" You asked.

Peter shook his head, brown hair falling into his eyes.

You smiled. Your free hand wrapped around Peter's cock, and just the mere warmth of your palm was enough to make him come, shooting his load all over his bare chest, and even up to his angled chin. "Oh, fuck, fuck-!" He cried out, writhing beneath you. His hands curled into the sheets below him as you fingered and stroked him through his climax, reveling in the tight heat of Peters body.

"Good boy, baby…" You whispered, dragging your fingers not occupied by his hole through the mess on his chest. With his jaw slack, and with him panting, you couldn't resist. You pushed your cum-slicked fingers into his mouth, and though his eyes went wide, he didn't complain. He cleaned your fingers off with his tongue, the wet noises from his mouth almost as lewd as the slick noises coming from his hole as you scissored your fingers inside of him. "I can't wait to fuck you." You murmured, looking him up and down, staring at the mess you had made him become. His flushed face, his disheveled hair, his cum-spattered skin and wild eyes.

Peter swallowed, his eyes wide and pleading. He even started to bob his head, which you'd definitely remember for a later date.

"That's right, baby. I'm going to fuck you like you fuck me." You promised, bending down to kiss a drop of cum off of his chin. You pulled your hand out of his mouth, and he groaned. "I hope you can handle all of your dirty talk turned against you, baby."

"Dirty talk?" He asked, his voice wrecked. "Oh - oh, fuck. That - that's not fair—"

You laughed, slowly easing your fingers out of his ass. He groaned, tilting his head towards the ceiling, and arching his back. "After all, what's a better way to make sure you're spending more time at home than to breed you, hm? I gotta make sure it takes…"

"Baby—" He giggled. Then, the head of your strap-on, your cock, nudged against his hole. He gasped. "Fuck, baby…"

"Just breathe, Pete." Slowly, you pressed into his tightness. Peters knuckles turned white around the sheets. You'd be surprised if he didn't tear little holes in the fabric by the end of this. His toes curled, and despite every instinct he had ever learned, he found himself hooking his legs around your waist to draw you closer.

Your hips were pressed flush together when Peter came again. It was a sudden, shocking thing, taking both of you by surprise. He nearly screamed, sobbing out your name as he soiled his chest - and yours - for a second time. You kissed him to guide him through it, while he clung to you for dear life, his fingers digging into your back. "I love you - I love you - I love you." He panted over and over, mouthing needily over your jaw. Your hands found their home in his disheveled brown locks, and you pet him, hoping to soothe.

"Breathe, baby… breathe, my love." You whispered. You pressed soft kisses to his fevered face, tasting his sweat and his fluster on his skin. Peter moaned softly, nuzzling into your cheek. You smiled and leaned up, enough to get a hand on his jaw, and pry his mouth open. "I love you." You spat in his mouth. His legs tightened around your hips as he swallowed.

"I love you, too." He murmured, eyes half-lidded.

"Do you want me to keep going?" You asked, gently scratching a fingernail over his cheek.

Peter nodded quickly, turning his head to kiss your fingertips. "Please… Jesus, please fuck me." He begged.

"Well, since you asked so nicely, pretty boy…" You chuckled. You sat up, and began to slowly rock your hips against his. You wanted to take him, to mount him and fuck him, but - you had both agreed to take it somewhat slow for the first time. Deep down, you both knew there would be a second. The sounds Peter made were sinfully sweet, his chest rising and falling with each high-pitched moan and whimper you coaxed out of him. "Peter Prior, you are so pretty like this," You murmured, holding onto that damn waist of his, that waist that you loved to grab, tease, and bite. "You're taking me so well, baby, look at you."

Peter whimpered as he met your eyes. "I'm doing a good job?"

"Baby, you're doing a wonderful job." You promised, rubbing circles into his hips with your thumbs. "You're the prettiest boy in the world, and you look like you were made to take my cock."

Peter let out a strangled moan. His toned arms were above his head now, hands curled around the bed frame. "Baby—" he whispered. "Feels… feels so good. I feel so… full."

You grinned. You adjusted your angle a little, and that was it. Wet squelching filled the air, thanks to your slightly excessive use of lube, and you hit exactly the spot you needed to, that deep, sensitive part inside of him. Tears welled up in Peters eyes as he came for a third time, his cock twitching weakly against his stomach, shooting out cute little spurts of come. His lips quivered as his body shook underneath you. His hips moved of their own accord like a man possessed, writhing and rocking, seeking more pleasure to ride out his high. He called out your name as tears slipped down his cheeks. "F-fuck—" he whispered, breathing heavily. "I mean - fuck." He laughed breathlessly, as you gently wiped his tears away. "See, now - this - mmh - this isn't a … punishment," He whispered, his voice weak. You rubbed his thighs, and slowly pulled out of him, fearing you might overstimulate the poor boy. "Fuck, ah - it's almost an... incentive." He admitted quietly, tears brimming in his blue eyes again. He never knew how empty he could feel, down there.

"You liked it that much?" You asked, slipping out of the harness as you sensed his need for skin to skin contact.

Peter nodded. "Yeah - yeah, I didn't think I would, but—" he sniffled, and pulled you down on top of him, so he could bury his nose into your neck. His skin was hot and sticky, and ordinarily you might have made a slight complaint, but; he clung to you so tightly, making himself as small as possible. Your heart ached for him.

"That's good, baby. I'm glad you liked it, and I'm proud of you for telling me so." You whispered, wrapping yourself around him, so the two of you were just a messy cluster of limbs. You pressed your nose into his hair, inhaling his familiar, cozy scent; the cheap shampoo he used, the cold that always lingered on his body, and the faintest smell of gun oil.

"You're proud of me?" Peter mumbled, his voice muffled by his soft lips against your skin.

"I'm so proud of you." You affirmed, stroking your fingers through his warm hair again. You felt him smile against your skin, and he completely melted into you.

"I love you. So much," He whispered, his fingers drawing little hearts on your ribs.

You had argued somewhere after the dinner rush. He got back from cleaning up his dads dirty work and being scolded for not doing good enough for him. 

Right after being chewed out by his father, he stopped by the little library where you work, as he always does after his shifts.

And he promised. You hadn’t seen him in a few days due to him being ordered to run around doing whatever the hell he did, you didn’t like to think about it. He promised he’d make sure to see you today.

So, of course when he texted you as soon as you got on your lunch break saying he was outside, you rushed your way out, abandoning the rest of your chips and sandwich just to see him. 

You hopped in his truck and immediately crossed over the center console, sitting in his lap and wrapping yourself around him.

He hugged you back, but his arms were tight and tense around you.

“I missed you.” You smiled into his neck, pressing little kisses against his neck to his jaw to his lips. You continued all over his face, his lips were weak and loose when he kissed you back.

“Baby- hold on, hey.” He said as nicely as he could, he turned his face away and held your wrists. “Can you calm down with the touchiness?”

“What?” You mumbled.

“Baby- don’t get me wrong, It’s nice and stuff, but you’re doin’ a lot right now, like goddamn just give me a minute to fuckin breathe.” He muttered, wiping a hand over his face.

Then he saw the way your face fell, that crease form between your eyebrows, the way you gulped and clenched your jaw. You pulled away slowly.

You slid off his lap and back into the passenger seat quietly. It took a few seconds of sitting in silence and staring ahead before he heard the car door open. 

“My lunch break is almost over, I should go back.” You muttered the lie as you hopped out, slamming the door shut before he could get a response out.

Now, the only light outside is the streetlamps, and Gators phone is still void of any texts from you while he decides what to do.

He sighs, both your parents' cars are in the driveway. From what it looks like from the windows, every light is off in the house. 

Except for the small rectangle of warm light on the side of the house, where your room is.

If Gator wasn’t so pissed off right now, he’d feel like a teenager again as he sneaks out to the side of the house, rapping his knuckles lightly on the window.

He can see that your door is closed, the doorknob is locked, you are nowhere to be seen in your room, and there is a small slither of your window left open with no screen on it.

He really should have never taught you how to take the screen off your window.

But now he’s worried, not panicking, he doesn’t panic. He just doesn’t like the idea of you being out this late at night by yourself. You already nearly made him pass out the other week with the spider.

Gator only clenches his fists and stomps as he mutters out curses. He whips out his phone and starts sending even more pathetically apologetic texts to you.

He’s on his second attempt of calling you by the time he’s back in his truck seat. He’s bouncing his leg enough to the point the vehicle is slightly shaking along with the movement. 

Your voice appears but it’s only your voicemail telling the caller to “leave a message and I’ll try to get back to you soon!”. And you sound so fucking sweet in it, it’s killing Gator.

The slicked back style of Gators hair has been long destroyed by now with the amount of times he’s ran his hands through it and his excessive stomping. The next best thing he can do is try and find you himself, he is not waiting. 

The truck pulls off the sidewalk and he keeps his foot on the pedal with enough weight for him to be going at a slow but tolerable pace, he’s impatient. He’s worried, but he doesn’t like to say that. It makes him feel like he’s saying he’s scared, which he is, but it makes him feel weak.

You couldn’t have gone far? It’s a small neighborhood. You’re probably just walking somewhere farther down the sidewalk? Maybe you were walking the other way when he was coming down your street?

He’s nearing the end of the street and he’s on the verge of smacking his horn, but a few more feet and you’ve appeared.

You’re at the playground that got built not too long ago at the end of your neighborhood, you’re sitting on the swingset. You’re in an old hoodie and pajama pants, your using the toe of your sandal to sway yourself back and forth.

Gators headlights practically blind you as you look up. He can see you squint, recognize it’s him, then grimace and look away.

He doesn’t even try to attempt to park nicely in between the freshly painted white lines. His truck is slanted and taking up three parking spaces.

You’re still swaying, you know Gator is walking up but you keep your eyes on the ground. Keeping that pouty look while you let your head lean against the chain on the swing.

Gator sighs and slides his hands into his pockets, he’s doing his own swaying now too.

Goddamn, he feels like a piece of shit.

“Planning a getaway?” He tries to joke. It falls flat.

“‘M not talking to you, Gator.” You mumble.

You didn’t mean to be so sensitive, you were just excited to see him. Gator is still getting used to physical touch being a good thing. Your hands have been the first to feel like his skin isn’t stinging when you touch his.

“Yeah. I kinda..noticed that.” He sighed. For the first time in awhile, Gator has no smart comebacks.

“Thought you wanted space. Thought you wanted to be alone.” Your eyes are burning holes into playground dirt, digging the sole of your old closed toe sandal into the woodchips.

“I wanted to say…that ‘m sorry.” He winces, it sounds pained. He doesn’t apologize much. “Sorry” is a word that’s becoming more common in vocabulary now that he’s met you.

God, you hate him. You’re considering taking your shoe off and throwing it at him.

You’re considering telling him to leave. But you won’t. You don’t want him to.

You’ll torture him a bit more.

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry.” He says clearly. Pitfully, pathetically. 

“I heard you.” You finally look up at him, your pink and slightly puffy eyes feel like a million tiny daggers into his body.

“So…you’ve got nothing to say about that? Nothing to say back?” He sticks his neck out. You roll your eyes and look away. You’re not looking at Gator, it’s making him ache.

“What is there to say? I heard you.” You shrug, pursing your lips together.

Gator sighs again, sliding his hands out of his pockets and pressing them against his back. He lets out a little groan as he stretches, he’s torturing you now.

“I guess you won’t be gettin’ my apology gift then.” He shrugs.

He catches the way your eyes shoot up. You’re a sucker for gift giving. Giving and receiving. Though you don’t get the latter much often from others.

Gator does his best to make up for it.

“Guess I’ll just return it, I got the receipt somewhere in my glovebox.” He shrugged. “It’ll just go back on the shelf and some other sorry boyfriend will buy it.” He sighs, kicking a few rocks. He’s putting on the most dramatic act to win you over.

And it’s working. God, you hate him.

He turns slowly and walks back to his truck, he can feel your eyes on him. He turns on the engine, but he’s not moving anywhere. He’s counting down. 

Waiting for it. 

It takes a little over 30 seconds. And then there’s the light knocking on his passenger window. Your silent way of asking to be let in. You can’t help but be polite.

He reaches over to push the door open, letting you see the surprise sitting on the passenger seat.

It’s a teddy bear with a little bow wrapped around it’s neck, as well as a fake flower that you can slip from its arms. There’s two party sized bags of your favorite candy along with it.

Worst of all, he’s buckled the bear in. The seatbelt is fastened right around its stomach and over its shoulder. 

You almost smile, you have to fight it, really fight it.

Yeah, he’s won you over. But you won’t let him know what yet.

Gator’s got one hand on the steering wheel, clenching and unclenching. His bottom lip is tucked under his teeth. He’s nervous. 

You purse your lips and clench your jaw, tilting your chin up as you inhale. 

You unbuckle the seatbelt and grab the bear from it’s spot, you hold it in your hands and stare at it like you’re analyzing it. You’re pretending to decide how you feel.

The poor teddy's little beady eyes are staring right back at you. You swallow your pride happily.

Gator’s already moving the bags of candy out the way so you can sit. His eyes stay on you while you hop into the seat. You shut the door and keep your eyes on the bear.

Gator tilts his head, he’s trying to look at you, get you to look at him. You rub one of the bear ears between your thumb and pointer finger, the fur is soft and a little silky against your skin.

“I’m still mad at you.” You let him know sternly, you still haven’t smiled yet.

“I know.” He sighs. He lets his hand fall from the steering wheel.

He grabs the bar under his seat and pushes his seat back, all the way back.

“C’mere.” He murmurs, laying slack against the seat. His hands lay flat on his thighs.

You slouch down into your seat and look at the side mirror, pretending to ignore him.

“Don’t make me ask you again.” Yet there’s no demand in his tone. But fuck, he’s worried he’s being mean again.

“You’re not even asking me. You’re just telling me.” You grumble.

But you go and you sit in his lap anyways, leaving the bear back on your seat and crawling over the center console to get to him. Lips jutted and eyes looking down and away from his face. You can see the cocky little smile blooming at the ends of his mouth in your peripheral vision.

“You’re so pouty.” Gator squishes your face between his fingers while his other hand lays against your waist.

The thing that’s changed in your personality now that you’ve gotten more comfortable with Gator. You pout a lot, you’re sensitive, you’re still quite shy. Just pouty too. Gator brought out the mouthy side of you that’s been hidden for years.

And Gator takes any chance he can to tease you for it. Because he’s Gator.

“I’m not pouty.” You grimace.

“Yea? Then what’s all this about?” He squishes your cheeks more and shakes your face lightly in his grasp.

“You.” Now you’re getting annoyed. You shove his hand away and move your head back. Your face seems to be stuck in a scowl.

Gators face slowly drops, he feels like an asshole again.

“Hey.” He says as softly as he knows how to, “Hey, ‘m not mad at ya.” The hand that you shoved away comes up to rub at your upper arm. Your fiddling with his hoodie strings, eyes focused on the way the gray cords of fabric twirl around your fingers.

Gator runs his hand down your arm and stops at your hand. He takes it into his, the rough pad of his thumb skates over your knuckles. He tilts his head down again, trying to get you to look at him. You give in.

Your eyes meet his and you swear you can see his face soften with relief.

“Look, ‘m pretty pissed you snuck off this late in the cold in this lil pair of shorts.” He mumbles as he tugs at the hem of your pajama shorts with his other hand, rubs at the fabric. “But ‘m not mad at you.”

A little sigh leaves you, you’re not sure how to respond. So he takes his chance to keep talking.

“Baby, I love you touchin’ me. I love your hands on me, all over me.” He takes your hands in his and presses them against his chest. You can feel the rump of his heartbeat under your palm when you press. “I love you touchin’ on me, yeah?” He brings up one of your hands to his lips, he presses kisses over your fingers, your palm, your knuckles, your wrist. 

He’s really trying to make it up to you.

“I didn’t mean to make you upset. I just- I had a shit day, I’ve been surrounded by asshole and fuckin idiots and- I was pissed off and I should’ve let myself cool down real quick before I saw you,” He’s rambling, this is new. “I should’ve told you I was pissed off and I could’ve- I should’ve been nicer ‘bout it. Should’ve been nicer to you.” His eyes are wandering all over as he fumbles through his words, looking everywhere but your face.

He takes a breath to swallow his own stubbornness.

“And I’m sorry, baby.” He squeezes his eyes shut and hangs his head a bit.

Good fucking god, he’s embarrassed. He can feel you looking at him and he wishes you weren’t, at least not in this moment. He can’t let you see him like this.

When he opens his eyes, you look away again. You’re biting the inside of your cheek.

“C’mon baby.” He murmurs, cradling his hand against your face, giving it a little push of encouragement to get you to turn your face to his. “I’m sorry.” You still avoid his eyes, he knows you’re waiting for more, you’re making him beg. This is a humiliation ritual for Gator.

He gets an idea and reaches over to the passengers seat where your new bear lays. 

“Gator’s sorry, yeah?” He picks up the bear, brushes the face of it against yours. The fake fur tickles your nose. Your face spreads into a meek smile. “You gonna forgive Gator? Gonna stop torturing him?” He keeps pressing it against your cheek until you can’t hold back and let out a little giggle. 

You grab the bear and he takes his chance to press a kiss against your cheek while you’re occupied. 

“Fine, fine.” You say through another giggle, Gator could faint at hearing your voice again. “I’m done torturing you. For now.” 

“Good.” He smiles. “You can get fussy with me all you want, I deserve that, but don’t go running off ‘cus of it.” He holds your chin gently, tilting your face down to give you a kiss to your forehead, the tip of your nose, then your lips.

You just smile and kiss him back before you wrap your arms around his neck, you smush yourself against him.

“I’m sorry you had a bad day.” You speak into his shoulder.

“You don’t gotta apologize, ‘s nothing. You made it better.” He feels like a cornball saying that outloud, but he can feel you smile against him, so it’s not too bad.

The two of you stay like that for a little while. Gator strokes his hand up and down your back while pressing little kisses to your neck here and there. Your shoulders loosen after some time, your chest rises and falls more slowly against his.

“You falling asleep on me?” He nudges you.

You absolutely are.

“Mm-mm.” You give him a lazy shake of your head. 

Gator pulls you away from him like he’s trying to take tape off a piece of paper without ripping it. Once he gets a look at your lidded eyes and pouty lips, he knows you’re about to knock out.

“Alright, time to go home.” He rubs his thumb against your cheek and you groan.

“Why can’t I just stay with you?” You whine.

Last time you fell asleep in his car, smushed against him, your neck hurt the rest of the following day.

“Next time.” He promises with a kiss to your lips. “Gotta get back to the ranch.” He holds onto your waist as you slip off his lap and onto the passenger seat, he’s pretending to guide you, he really just wants to hold you.

“I thought you were patrolling?” You yawn, leaning your head on his shoulder.

“Only to find you.” He kisses the top of your head before turning on the engine. You smile to yourself.

Once he’s parked outside your house again, he walks you to your window and lifts you just a little bit so you can sneak back in through your window.

“Get your little sneaky ass back in there.” He gives you a small swat to your ass and he can hear the little giggle you try to hide.

He passes you the two bags of candy he bought for you, you already carried your bear with you crawling through your window.

Gator finishes off giving you his gifts by leaning in and pressing one last kiss for the night to your lips, he lingers.

You’re just about to say goodnight and close your window when he stops you.

“Uh uh, screen back on the window.” He tells you with that stupid cocky grin. You roll your eyes but you listen anyway, you pick up the window screen from where it’s laying against your wall and shove it back into the windowsill. 

It’s annoying having to look at each other through the thin grid, you feel like some princess locked in a tower.

“I better not see you running around this late again.” He's still got that stupid grin on his face. He shoots a wink at you before walking away from your window.

“Uh huh. Later Gator.” You say with a sweet sweet smile, you know it pisses him off. 

And before he can fully turn around, you’re shutting your window and closing your blinds. You laugh behind your hand, you love torturing him.

Gator drives back to the ranch in silence. He yawns and runs his hand down his face to his neck, rubs at it.

He wishes he crawled through the window with you, wrapped his arms around you and stayed in your bed for the night. Feel your arms tucked around him and legs lay over his under the covers, feel your hands twitch the way they always do and listen to the little breaths you always make when you’re asleep.

His phone vibrates on the dash. 

It’s a text from you.

goodnight 💕

He’s so amused by you.

You jammed the keys into the ignition and backed out of the parking space. The drive back home was scary. You kept looking back at your phone, expecting another text to pop up but thankfully none did.

When you finally got home, you locked the front door and leaned against it.

“What the fuck…” You whispered to yourself, closing your eyes.

It was a good thing the next two days were a weekend. A temporary shield. For the next forty-eight hours, you didn’t have to step foot on campus and risk catching a glimpse of his silver hair across the building.

But hiding out in your room didn’t stop your mind from racing. A full day hadn’t even passed when you finally gave in and opened instagram. You pressed the search bar and typed his username into it.

You weren’t mutuals, he never followed you and neither did you follow him.

There wasn’t much to see. He only had one post and a highlight. It was strange trying to match that version of him with the guy who had texted you for the past month.

Though on sunday, while your phone was open on a groupchat, your peace was interrupted.

👻: youre online, i know you see my texts

You stared at the small block of text, your chest tightening. Again, you didn’t reply.

By monday morning, you had braced yourself to go to campus again. It was packed as you walked with Tanselle.

“So I told him if he thinks I’m letting that happen, he’s out of his mind,” Tanselle was saying, before her hand suddenly clamped down hard on your forearm. “Wait. Don’t look but Aerion is heading right to us.”

You looked up anyway.

Aerion was cutting through the crowded walkway. As soon as you looked, his eyes were already on you, his face tense and unreadable.

The people next to you instinctively quieted down, stepping back as he closed the distance and stopped in front of you.

You tried pivoting to the right but he blocked the way, cutting off your route.

“We need to talk,” he said, voice low and rough.

“I’m trying to get to class,” you replied, keeping your voice even, refusing to let the panic show on your face.

“Don’t do that,” he muttered, stepping closer. His form completely covered yours, and you felt suffocated in the open area. “You know exactly why I’m standing here.”

You kept your arms folded around your waist, your posture rigid. A few students walking past were already slowing down, noticing the interaction. “I have to go,” you mumbled.

“No–”

“Aerion!”

A sharp voice broke the tension between you. A girl with long, blonde hair walked over, calling his name as she hurried over. It was Jess—you knew because your friends had told you she was someone he used to talk to before things apparently ended badly.

“Aerion, hold on,” she said, totally ignoring you as she reached him. “Did you get my messages? You haven’t replied to any of–”

Aerion didn’t look at her. He tilted his head slightly, his jaw tight as he dropped a flat, impatient, “not now.”

It was a short distraction, but it was enough. You didn’t hesitate as you grabbed Tanselle’s wrist, pulling her with you as you turned on your heel. You moved as fast as your legs could carry you.

“Whoa–hey! Slow down!” Tanselle stumbled slightly, scrambling to keep up as you dragged her toward the stairwell.

Once you got on the platform between the stairs, you let go of her wrists, your heart still pounding hard.

Tanselle adjusted her tote bag, looking at you with wide eyes.

“What the hell is happening?” She demanded. “You barely explained a thing to any of us and now Aerion is doing this? Since when do you two even speak?”

“I’ll explain later, I promise.” You looked down to make sure he wasn’t anywhere close. “Let’s just go.”

“You’re a terrible friend,” Tanselle grumbled, though she immediately followed you up to the remaining steps.

Five minutes later, the bell rang and you were already sitting at your usual row in Davis’s class.

“Settle down,” Davis silenced the class. “Like I said, today we’re starting the peer reviews on the personal assignment from the start of this semester. You’ll be working with the same partner from the previous project, find them and get moving.”

Your stomach dropped.

Before you could even think about moving, the chair next to you moved. Tanselle was gone, shooting you a sorry look as she settled next to her partner.

You searched around the room when suddenly, Aerion sat down, his shoulder brushing yours as he turned his upper body toward you.

“How long?” he asked, keeping his voice low, but his eyes were drilling into yours.

You turned your head, gaze fixing on your laptop, your fingers resting still on your keyboard. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Stop,” Aerion leaned closer. He looked guarded, a defensive edge tracing his words. “The text about the project. You knew it was me. How long have you known before that?”

The accusation stung, but you didn’t raise your voice. You looked over at him, offended by the fact that this was his main concern.

“A few days before that.” You furrowed your brows. “I didn’t know anything at the beginning. I put the pieces together when I saw you pull out your phone.”

Aerion watched your face, his brows drawing together as he searched your expression. “Then why did you go silent on monday?”

“Seriously?” You paused, “I don’t know, maybe because you basically called me boring.” You scoffed, looking right back at him.

“You barely even acknowledged me, and then what? You texted that your partner who happens to be me was just whatever. Why would I want to keep talking to you after that?”

Aerion flinched. The words seemed to hit him, the defensive wall in his eyes fracturing into genuine surprise. He opened his mouth to say something, his hand shifting on the desk, but a shadow fell over your screen.

“Are you guys actually working, or what?”

Jess had walked up the tiered steps, stopping at the edge of your row. She leaned on the desk, looking down at you with a fake, dismissive smile.

“Don’t take it personal,” Jess said, her voice loud enough for the people in the next row to hear. “He won’t even remember your name next week.”

The comment was explicitly meant to embarass you, and it worked. You felt your face warm up as a few classmates looked over.

But before the silence could stretch, Aerion turned.

The change in him was instantaneous. He looked up at Jess, his face turning cold.

“Go.” His voice wasn’t loud, but it brooked no refusal.

Jess’s smile faltered slightly. “I was just saying–”

“I don’t care,” Aerion interrupted, his stare landing on her in a way that made her step back. “Leave. We’re working.”

The people watching started whispering and nudging each other. Jess’s cheeks flushed a bright red. She wanted to snap back, but caught the total lack of interest in Aerion’s eyes, and quickly turned around.

You sat there, your hands unmoving. The frustration that had been building up since last week slowly started to ease, replaced by a strange, heavy feeling.

Aerion had just defended you in front of the whole class. You blinked twice, trying to process what had just happened.

He took a slow breath. Not looking at anyone else in the room, he turned back to face you.

“Thanks,” you murmured, swallowing as your eyes landed back on the screen of your laptop. You clicked open the peer review rubric Professor Davis had shared to the group. You had to find a way out of talking with him.

“Davis wants us to evaluate the thesis of the intro first,” you pointed out, acting as if nothing happened.

Aerion licked the bottom of his lip, caught off guard by the abrupt shift. His shoulders shifted as you continued looking through the rubric. “What?”

“Is your document open, or do you want to look at mine first?” you answered, tapping your trackpad to highlight the first section of the bibliography.

A frustrated sigh escaped him, you could see his confusion from your peripheral vision, his jaw clenching as he realized you were shutting him out.

He was used to people reacting to him by either backing down or trying to stay in his favour. This indifference was clearly a new territory for him. A difficult one too.

For a second, it looked like he might push past it anyway, his hand tightening on the edge of the desk. Yet he let out a heavy, defeated exhale, pulling his laptop closer. “Mine is open.” His voice was clipped.

For the rest of the period, you kept your barrier firmly in place. You weren’t sure why it was so hard for you to hold a proper conversation with him.

You two texted nonstop for a month. It wasn’t like he was a complete stranger. But somehow it felt like it.

Aerion complied, though his compliance was tense. His fingers tapped against the desk whenever you took too long to read through a paragraph. His focus was entirely divided between the text on his screen and your face.

Every time your fingers accidentally brushed his while adjusting the laptop, he would wait to see if you’d pull away. You always did.

When Davis dismissed the class at last, relief coursed through you.

Snapping your laptop shut, you slid it into your bag and slung the strap over your shoulder. “I’ll upload the comments to the docs by the end of the week.” You stood up, looking him in the eye for a brief, passing second.

Aerion stared up at you from his seat, his throat bobbing as he swallowed whatever he wanted to say.

“Okay.”

You walked to the exit, where Tanselle was already waiting for you. Turning your head for a moment before exiting, your eyes met his.

Reluctantly, you had to tell your friends everything as they kept demanding. No, almost everything.

You conveniently left out the part where you had grown to have this strange, unexplainable, and impenetrable feeling for him.

Tanselle then pointed out how she hasn’t seen Aerion with any girls recently. Everyone agreed, which didn’t help your case.

Yet two days passed without a single notification.

By wednesday, the silence had turned from peace into an uncomfortable, distracting weight. You spent the night trying to study, but your mind kept drifting back to him.

Eventually, you couldn’t resist and opened his chat. You scrolled all the way back to the start, back when he was just an anonymous stranger who made you laugh.

Just as you got to the part where you started icing him out, a new message came through.

You frowned, lips parting as you clicked on the button to the most recent chat.

👻: if you wont talk to me in person, fine

👻: lets do it here

Your heart skipped a beat at the sight of the text. You sat up and paced your room for a full minute before warily typing back.

YOU: What do you want aerion

It felt weird to actually acknowledge who you were talking to.

👻: do me a favour

👻: talk to me like you did before finding out. pretend you dont know who i am

Your eyes narrowed at his message. It was a bizarre request, but the familiar look of the text thread made it entirely too easy to slip back.

YOU: What???

YOU: Fine

👻: tell me everything

YOU: Ok u wanna know what i think?

YOU: I think the guy im paired with in davis’s class is an arrogant prick

There was a long pause. The typing bubbles appeared, vanished, then appeared again.

👻: an arrogant prick? really?

YOU: Yes

YOU: He refuses to talk to anyone outside his immediate circle, he walks like he owns the world, and most importantly he treats his project partners as if they were invisible

👻: maybe hes just focused

YOU: Nope, he didn’t even look at my face

YOU: Can you believe it

YOU: Then he has the nerve to say that im a whatever.. Like sorry i didnt juggle for your entertainment??

A couple minutes passed and you thought he wasn't going to respond, but he was still online.

👻: huh

👻: he sounds terrible

A small, involuntary smile tugged at the corner of your mouth, and you tried your best to fight it down.

YOU: He is, hes mean

👻: i didnt mean to be

The sudden drop of the bit you two were doing made your breath hitch. The text continued.

👻: im sorry about monday

👻: and the thing i said

👻: youre not whatever

You stared at his texts, the honesty of it surprising you. You typed out a reply then deleted it. While trying to formulate a reply, another message popped up.

👻: i have to go

The chat went dead. You sat back on your pillows, staring at those four words, your mind spinning into a frantic spiral. I have to go. What did that mean? Go for the day? Or was this his dramatic way of saying goodbye to whatever you guys were?

You slammed your phone down on the mattress, irritated by the sudden exit. You needed to clear your head.

Sighing, you grabbed a towel and headed into the bathroom to take a long, hot shower, letting the steam wash away the stress of the week.

By the time you stepped back into your bedroom, it was already dark outside. Drying your hair and changing into your pajamas, you picked your phone up from the bed to check the time.

There was a new text, sent just a minute ago.

👻: open the door

You froze, reading the message over and over again to make sure you weren’t hallucinating.

You walked into the living room, your bare feet making no sound against the floor.

You never gave him your address.

The only people who knew the exact apartment complex you lived in were your closest friends.

Fuck, you thought. Tanselle…

Panic flooded your body as you approached the entryway, and right on cue, a knock came from the other side of the door.

Taking a shallow breath, you unlocked the deadbolt and pulled the door open.

Aerion was standing under the dim hallway light. He was wearing a tight gym shirt, his silver hair slightly messy from the harsh wind of the night.

He wasn’t empty handed. His right hand was carrying a bag that looked to be from a bakery. He saw your gaze switching from his face to the plastic. “You mentioned last week that you were eating cheesecake.”

Your brain refused to believe that Aerion Targaryen was standing at your door with a whole cheesecake because of a passing comment you had made a whole week ago.

The wall you had built felt incredibly fragile right now, but you had to keep your composure. Slowly, you stepped aside, opening the door just wide enough for him to move past.

Aerion walked into the apartment, getting his shoes off by the door. He looked at you, taking in your damp hair and pajamas, then walked to stand near the edge of the kitchen table, setting the bag on the counter.

You stared at him, your mind trying to catch up. The tips of your ears went red at the realization that you were wearing only your pajamas in front of him.

“How do you even know where I live?”

“Tanselle,” he said bluntly. “Don’t start a fight with her, I didn’t give her much of an option.”

“Of course...” You huffed mostly to yourself.

You walked past him to the water dispenser, grabbing a clean glass from the drying rack and filling it with cold water. You set it on the counter near him.

“Thanks.” He picked up the glass. Taking a slow sip, his eyes scanned the living room before settling back on you.

“Look,” he started, voice dropping an octave, sounding rougher in the quiet apartment. “I’ll get to the point. I know you think I'm a piece of shit. It's just that I... didn’t know it was you.” His shoulders shifted slightly as his muscles got less tense.

You raised a brow at that. “So just because you didn't know it was me you treated me like that?”

“No. It sounds terrible I know. I guess I was already comfortable talking to you online that I figured I didn't need to talk to anyone in person,” he explained, his tone stripped of its usual cold edge. “When you started ignoring me, it drove me crazy.”

“At first, I thought you knew the entire time. I assumed the worst, but then I started worrying. And I didn’t wanna stop talking to you.” His voice got quiet toward the end.

You didn’t know what to say. The honesty of his words rang through your mind, effectively breaking down the image you have already built of him in your head.

“...And what about Jess?” You asked after a beat and immediately regretted it.

Aerion’s eyes flickered with genuine disgust and annoyance before he shook his head.

“She’s nothing.” He leaned against the counter. “We used to talk,” he hesitated, “then I stopped but she couldn't accept it. She’s nothing.” He repeated, noticing the fidgeting of your hands.

“Oh,” was all you could say. Aerion seemed to recognize the shift in the air. He finished the rest of the water and set it back on the counter.

“I should let you get some sleep,” he cleared his throat, eyes lingering on your lips.

He walked toward the front door, putting his shoes back on. You opened the door, unsure if you even wanted him to leave.

The curiosity that had been lingering in the back of your mind all week finally slipped out. “Before you go... I wanna know something.”

Aerion paused, an amused spark gleaming in his eyes. “Yeah?”

“What did you think of me at the start? Like after you found out I wasn't Michael.”

He let out a low chuckle, a smirk splaying across his face. “I thought you had a ridiculously sharp mouth. You always called me out on my attitude, it was infruriating. But it was intriguing.”

Aerion then tilted his head, turning the tables. “My turn. Why'd you even reply to an unknown number?”

A smile broke through your expression, you no longer felt the need to put on a mask in front of him. “Mmm... being real I'm pretty sure I was just bored and couldn't sleep. I thought it'd be funny and it absolutely was.”

He laughed softly and paused at the threshold, turning back to look at you. “So you're saying you're glad you replied?”

You pretended to think for a second, looking up. “Maybe,” you teased, the familiar banter coming back.

A tiny smile touched his lips—the first real one you’ve seen from him in person. He let out a hum. “Right. I'll remember that. Go sleep now.” He backed up to the threshold, his eyes only leaving yours as he turned around.

“Goodnight.” You called out to him as you closed the door and locked the deadbolt, hearing the thud of his footsteps slowly fade.

An hour later, you tried to go straight to sleep, but you kept tossing and turning. Giving up, you got out of bed and walked to the kitchen, pulling the box out of the bag. You recognised the logo on the box as you opened the lid, it was from the expensive bakery near campus.

The cheesecake looked so incredible, you didn’t bother with a plate. Grabbing a fork, you stabbed the cake and took a massive bite.

After eating a solid half of it directly out of the box, you stared at the remaining mess and pulled your phone out to snap a quick photo.

YOU: [IMAGE ATTACHED]

YOU: I forgot to thank you lol

You didn’t expect him to reply immediately, assuming he was already asleep. But the bubbles popped up almost instantly.

👻: youre welcome

👻: did you save me a bite or are you selfish

YOU: Nope its all for me

👻: next time ill just make you feed it to me

You bit your lip to contain your smile, sliding down onto the living room rug and propping your back on the sofa.

YOU: Hm

YOU: Depends on how well u behave the rest of the week

👻: im always well behaved

Giggling, you quickly texted back.

YOU: Liar

YOU: Anw out of curiosity what do u have me saved as

👻: unknown

👻: until about a day ago

YOU: Huh what is it now

👻: thats for my eyes only

YOU: Oh rly

YOU: Ok then im saving u as row four lol

👻: how creative

YOU: It fits

YOU: Reminds me that ure an arrogant prick everyday

👻: good

👻: think about me everyday

Your heart did a violent flip.

Going to his profile, you debated on actually renaming him as row four, but you decided on Aerion 🎱. The emoji just felt right.

YOU: Just changed it

Aerion 🎱: row four?

YOU: No and im not telling u

YOU: Thats unless u tell me minee?

Aerion 🎱: oh thats how it is

Aerion 🎱: never

YOU: Wow!! Ur impossible im gonna off myself

YOU: Ok im going to sleep before u piss me off more

Aerion 🎱: lmao alright

Aerion 🎱: goodnight dont die

You let out a content huff before getting up and heading back to your bedroom.

YOU: Goodnightt

The next morning, the lecture hall was filled with pre-class chatter. It was history class but your professor fell sick and Professor Davis was there as a substitute.

As usual, you sat beside Tanselle who was vibrating with anxiety, staring at you sideways ever since you arrived.

Leaning in close, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Okay, you’re scaring me. You haven’t mentioned him once. Are you not going to kill me?”

You let out a small giggle, shaking your head. “Nope. It’s all settled.”

Tanselle clicked her tongue, utterly puzzled. “Wait… really?” So he didn’t actually go to your house then?”

“No, he did,” you corrected smoothly, as if it was completely normal.

A noise of confusion escaped her, her eyes bulging. “What!? He actually came over? And you’re acting like this isn’t wild?”

Just then, the doors swung open, and Aerion walked in. He was late, and Professor Davis didn’t bother calling him out, simply beginning the lesson.

You watched as he walked up the main aisle, expecting him to stop in row four, but he continued walking. He moved past his friends without a second thought.

Then without tilting his head up, his eyes locked onto yours. A warmth instantly bloomed in your chest, a smile growing on your face, and you quickly bit your inner cheek to hide it.

He reached your row and without saying a word, he pulled the chair beside you and slid effortlessly into the seat.

Nudging your chin toward the lower row, you pointed at a few familiar faces who had turned around their chairs to watch him. “Your friends are literally staring at you. They’re waiting for you.”

Aerion followed your glance for a split second before looking back at you. “So?”

Before you could reply, the screech of the microphone caught everyone’s attention. “You two,” Davis barked into the mic, his voice echoing. “If you two have matters that are more pressing to discuss then feel free to take it out of the class.”

The weight of Davis calling you out together made the class go extremely silent, staring back and forth between you and Aerion. You could see Jess staring menacingly from the other side of the room.

Your lips formed into a pout as Davis finally looked away, continuing his talk. Aerion, on the other hand, did not take his eyes off you, his smirk widening slightly at the sudden audience.

He slowly leaned back in his chair and for a moment you thought the distraction was over. But under the desk Aerion shifted. The side of his thigh bumped firmly against yours, deliberately pressing in with lingering heat. A sharp jolt shot straight up your spine.

You shot him a warning glare, but he was already busy on his phone.

A second later, your phone buzzed in your lap.

Aerion 🎱: z

Aerion 🎱: z

Aerion 🎱: z

You hid your hands under the desk, looking down to make sure Professor Davis wasn’t looking.

YOU: Wtf

Aerion 🎱: we cant talk out loud

Aerion 🎱: i have to find other ways to get your attention

You glanced at him out of the corner of your eyes, but his face looked to be absolutely calm and concentrated as he pretended to analyze the projector screen.

YOU: Oh ure a pro

YOU: Wait move ur leg ppl r staring

Aerion 🎱: doesnt matter

Aerion 🎱: if you care move yours then

YOU: Ok nevermind

Aerion 🎱: mhm

Aerion 🎱: what are you doing after class

YOU: Its a free period im probably gonna go to the cafe

Aerion 🎱: wrong

Aerion 🎱: we’re going somewhere

YOU: ??? Hello why wasnt i informed

Aerion 🎱: i just informed you

You almost laughed at that but managed to keep it in, not wanting to draw even more attention from Davis.

YOU: Stop before i get kicked out of the class

YOU: Ok im leaving u bye

Aerion 🎱: stay

Aerion 🎱: hes not gonna see

YOU: If he does im blocking u

Aerion 🎱: i know where you live it doesnt matter

Your lips parted at the sheer audacity of his last message, a rush of heat hitting your cheeks as the memory from last night flashed through your mind.

A love that blossomed slowly but surely, as sometimes happens to childhood friends. In between fighting monsters and keeping each other alive, when you finally fell into each other, together, the rightness of it was just there. Unquestionable and unyielding.

The time before him sliding seamlessly into the time where it was just him.

And it worked so well, too.

You moved together like you were made for each other. Whether it was battling the evil from the upside down, making breakfast in the kitchen, or making love. You complemented each other perfectly in a way that settling down didn’t feel like a compromise, it just felt natural.

When he slid that little diamond ring on your finger, no one commented on the youth you still bore on your face. That maybe more of your life should be lived before making such a big decision. No one ever questioned the wisdom of it. Because it made sense, the two of you together.

And then it ended. Not with an argument.

It ended softly, with his quiet pleading.

With a whispered “Please” and not a shouted “Get out!”

But you left all the same. Engagement ring on the coffee table, full of unfulfilled promises.

And life continued without him. With you pretending that you didn’t have a Steve-shaped hole in your chest, wide and gaping.

However, the time after Steve feels displaced. Like a phase that doesn’t belong in the timeline and it’s caused everything to feel disjointed after that.

You tried to date, tried to see what love would feel like with other people. But nothing ever felt right, or fit right.

So you were forced to feel comfortable in your own skin. To sit with yourself, alone, something you hadn’t been in such a long time.

But he’s always there, occupying the corners of your mind. When you first received your teaching license, your first instinct was to call him. The phone already in your hand, the first three numbers dialed before you stopped yourself.

And it continued on like that for a while. During the bad moments, when the worst nightmares shook you violently awake, sobs erupting uncontrollably from your body. On beautiful days when it was bright out with a nice, calming breeze and nature’s colors were vibrant and alive.

The days you thought about the past. Of the things you’d been through together.

And on a day like this.

When your first grade class is having a career day.

Because Steve Harrington is standing at the back of your classroom dressed in his fireman uniform, with your colorful bulletin board serving as a backdrop. His face next to your makeshift calendar for November is not how you imagined seeing him for the first time in a very long time.

He looks good.

Healthy, and in one piece.

Okay, he looks great.

With his hair is shorter with the back cropped closer to the nape and the slight scruff along his jaw, Steve Harrington looks every bit as attractive as he did when you were still together. He’s filled out quite a bit since you’ve last seen him, and you cannot deny how good he looks in his uniform, a dark blue button up tucked neatly into his matching trousers. His shoulders appear broader, his uniform stretching over larger biceps than you remember and you let yourself wonder if he would feel the same if you stood in the circle of his arms again.

You mentally shake your head at the thought. Arms crossed tightly against your own chest and an equally tight smile on your face, you try to concentrate on listening to Simon Gubler’s father talk about the joys of being an accountant to six and seven year olds that have barely learned basic addition. You can feel the heat of his stare, the way that his eyes track your every movement as you walk around the room.

He isn’t supposed to be here.

Ashley Humphrey’s father is.

So yes, you are unprepared for Steve Harrington to step into your tiny classroom, overwhelming you with his presence. And you hate being unprepared.

You clap your hands, effectively cutting off Simon’s father before he can go into corporate taxation laws.

“Thank you so much, Simon’s dad, for explaining to us the wonderful world of accounting and numbers,” you announce as you walk to the front of the classroom to stand by your desk. “Does anyone have any questions for Simon’s dad?”

You peruse the room with a smile plastered on your face, even though the sight of little Sarah Matthews’s head lolling to the side on the edge of slumber makes you want to grimace. Not one tiny hand in the air.

“If there are no questions, lets all thank Mister Gubler for coming in and sharing his precious time with us,” you prompt your half-asleep class.

“Thank you, Mister Gubler,” they manage to chorus albeit a little slower and softer than you prefer.

Thankfully, Mr. Gubler is nice to enough to merely shrug his shoulders and wave to everyone before walking to the back of the room.

Taking a look at your list of names on your table, you swallow hard. You’re not even sure you checked. There’s only one person left to present.

“I know you are all very excited for our last presenter to explain their career to us.” Your students start to perk up at your words. “Ashley’s dad, Captain Humphrey, was supposed to be here today. Unfortunately,” your eyes flit to Steve’s for a moment before settling back on your class, “He isn’t yet able to make it in. He did send us a lovely thank you letter which I’ll be reading to the class after recess. But he does want us to know that he is very grateful for all the Get Well Soon cards you made for him.” Your eyes land on Ashley who sits at the front of the class and you give her an encouraging smile and she rewards you with a timid one.

You try to ignore the way your hands grow cold, and your back stiffens. “But, in his place we have today, Mister Harrington, one of our dedicated firefighters.” You can’t help but emphasize the word and you catch the way Steve freezes. “Let’s all give him a round of applause.”

Your kids enthusiastically clap their hands, which makes you feel a little embarrassed at the obvious lack of it earlier.

Steve starts for the front of the class and he’s careful with his steps making sure not to bump into any of the desks on the way, made difficult by the duffle bag in his hand.

“Hello, everyone! My name is Steve Harrington and I’m one of the firemen with the Hawkins Fire Department.” He tells your first graders as he comes to a stop just five feet away from you and he bends down to set his bag on the floor beside him.

You try your best not to look. But he crouches low to unzip his bag and takes out an off-white plastic object from the bag. You clear your throat as you look away.

 Standing, Steve shows the item to the class. “Raise your hands if any of you have one of these in your house!”

The show of hands is impressive and Steve grins. “That’s great, kids! This is a smoke detector and everyone should have this in their house. When the alarm goes off that means that there’s smoke in the house. And smoke means that there is a fire. When the alarm goes off, that means you need to call the fire department. Does anyone know what number you need to call?” He asks the children.

Your class doesn’t disappoint as they all yell. “Nine-one-one!”

You can’t help but smile as Steve goes through the rest of his presentation, the kids in rapt attention. He shows them his protective equipment from his bag, lets some of them even try the helmet on. You’ve forgotten how good he is with children, and you feel your defenses ease away into something warm.

Steve fields a million questions from the kids as well as expertly deflecting any requests to ride the red firetruck parked outside. And when you notice that you’re nearing recess, you find yourself a little disappointed that you need to cut his time short.

The kids are disheartened as expected, and they’re not shy about showing it. Plenty of moans and groans fill the small room and you bite your lip when you find Steve’s warm smile in the corner of your eye.

“Let’s all give St—” you catch yourself, “Mister Harrington an applause for his amazing presentation.”

After a loud and exuberant applause from your class, Steve gets on his knee next to Ashley’s desk. There’s a short, murmured conversation between the two of them before she leans in for a tight hug that Steve readily returns.

Your heart skips a beat.

Because there was a time that you thought of this as your future. But instead of Ashley Humphrey, it’s a little kid with Steve’s puppy dog eyes and your smile.

You tear your eyes away from Steve and take a deep breath. Clapping your hands together, the kids settle down in their seats. “We’re going to have recess soon so let’s thank our guests for coming here today and sharing their jobs with us. Let’s go ahead and say “Thank you guests” on three,” you instruct once the room is quiet. “One, two, three!”

“Thank you, guests!” the kids chant loudly.

“Good job, everyone! Now I’ll give you a few minutes of free time to speak with the guests for any questions you forgot to ask earlier. I know some moms and dads have been very patient and are waiting to get some hugs in before they leave.”

The kids waste no time jumping out of their chairs, some heading to their respective parents, others talking amongst themselves. You feel Steve turn to you, his attention fully on you once again. But before he can move towards you, a bunch of the boys manage to create an effective, and very loud wall as they inundate him with even more questions and requests.

You take the distraction and walk to the end of the room to speak with the rest of the volunteer parents. Shaking their hand and thanking them for their time, your attention still on Steve and his attempts to get to all the questions being thrown at him all at once. He takes the kids seriously, too, you realize and when your heart starts to melt you’re thankful that free time is over.

The last thing you need to fall back into the pit of regret that was already so hard to climb out.

You ask the kids to fall in line and it takes almost the full minute for them to cooperate and when the bell rings, you’re relieved that you won’t need to be back in Steve’s orbit for much longer. The kids file out of the room obediently and you walk them outside to enjoy their recess in the playground.

Rebecca, the kindergarten teacher, is already outside with her kids and waiting for you to join her. She readily holds a bag of pretzels out to you and you take a couple gratefully as you come to stand next to her under a shady tree.

Already married with kids of her own in their preteens, Rebecca and you grew close when her family moved last year from the city after her husband took a position at the hospital. She was warm, brutally honest in the most caring way, and a good friend in the times you felt like you had none.

“How’d career day go? I don’t think I’ve heard a more enthusiastic one before. My kids kept getting distracted by all the clapping.”

You chew a pretzel slowly before swallowing. “We had a firefighter for the last one so the kids were excited about that.”

“I forgot about that. I guess whoever Captain Humphrey sent was a hit with the kids.”

You hum.

Rebecca nudges your shoulder and nods over to your right. “That him? He’s cute.”

A gaggle of your kids have congregated by the fence, all staring at the shiny red firetruck parked by the curb. And there is Steve, standing next to it, looking right at you.

He has his arms folded across his chest as he leans against the side of his truck. A pair of sunglasses, sit low on the bridge of his nose. You almost smile at him trying to look cool and you’re not quite sure if the performance is for you or the children.

You quickly look away and clear your throat before digging back into the bag of Rebecca’s pretzels.

“You know he’s looking straight at you, right?” Rebecca points out.

You hum again.

Then, because you have no self-control, you casually run your fingers through your hair, fluffing it to the right side of your face as you peer back at him.

He’s still staring at you but the slow grin that falls across his handsome taunts you with the knowledge that he knows exactly what you’re doing. And the realization that neither of you are being all that subtle makes your heart skip a beat.

Again.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Rebecca mutters from beside you. “Tell me you at least got his phone number.”

You almost choke on your spit. “Rebecca!” You hiss.

“What? He’s cute. And if I were ten years younger, I’d ask for his number myself.”

“I like how age is the one deterrent here and not the fact that you’re happily married.”

She snorts. “Stop deflecting.”

“I’m not,” you answer defensively. You heave a sigh. “Besides… it’s not like that.”

“What’s it like if not a handsome guy who has been staring at you for the last five minutes.”

You’re silent for a moment before you finally tell her the missing piece. “That’s Steve Harrington.”

“Your ex-fiancé Steve Harrington?” You feel Rebecca grab your arm. “You never said he looks like that.”

“Not that that has anything to do with anything.” You roll your eyes.

“See, now I regret never pushing you for details. You never even told me why you broke up.”

You sigh, finally turning your back on the direction that Steve is standing. “It’s a long story,” you simply say, before walking away.

…

As a kindness—although you think the use of the word is quite generous—Ashley’s father offers to have your first grade class go on a short field trip to the fire department. A sort of apology, he explained, for not having been able to make it to career day.

You prefer the apology without the added work of a field trip and the possibility of running into your ex again. But Ashley let the cat out of the bag to the rest of the class before a decision could be made and it didn’t feel right to deny her after everything that her family had already been through.

So on the last day of school before the Thanksgiving break, you pack the kids with their ill-concealed excitement into the school bus, along with the new teacher's aide, Jessica. You're appreciative of the extra set of hands and even if it someone who's still a little green. But Jessica is bubbly by nature, with shiny blonde hair that bounces as she laughs, and that matches the energy of the kids fairly well.

It's a short trip from the school to the fire station, thankfully, because the children are practically bursting with excitement eagerly peering out the windows and chattering about sliding down the pole (which you have already explained will not be happening) and riding the firetruck (which just might).

When you arrive at the station, Captain Humphrey is already waiting for you, a beautiful merle border collie obediently sitting by his feet. There's a warm, welcoming smile on his face as he stands, holding his hands behind his back.

You can already hear Ashley excitedly telling everyone, "That's my dad, guys! That's my daddy!"

Once the bus comes to a full stop, you quickly remind your class to be on their best behavior then have them form a line so that they can file out of the bus as orderly as you can manage. You and Jessica make sure that they have their sweaters and jackets on as the November air has turned predictably chilly with the onset of winter.

After you have the class congregated in the firehouse bay in front of the Captain, you walk straight up to him and he eagerly shakes your hand as he greets you.

“Good morning, Captain,” you greet him back. “Happy to see you’re doing better.”

“Thank you for coming to visit when I was still in the hospital. It really meant a lot to the family, especially Ashley, that you went through the trouble.”

You wave his gratitude away. “No trouble at all. Ashley’s such a sweet girl and I was happy to do it.”

"Well, you baked us so many cookies, Maggie brought some over here to the station and I think the guys are waiting for me to take another fall so they can have more of your chocolate chip cookies," he tells you with an easy smile. He opens his mouth to say more but Ashley all but barrels into his legs.

"Everyone, this is my dad and he's the boss," Ashley announces proudly.

Her dad laughs as he pats Ashley's head lovingly. "Not the boss, but one of the bosses. The real boss is at a conference in Indianapolis." He turns to the rest of the class then. "Thank you, everyone, for coming down here today! I'm Captain Humphrey, Ashley's dad. And this here," he gestures at the dog beside him, "is Tilly. I'm sorry I couldn't make it to career day but Steve told me that you all had a lot of fun."

There are several variations of "yes" from your students and you grin at their growing excitement.

"That's great! I'm going to take you on a tour of the station. Please make sure not to touch anything until I tell you that it's okay. And please no trying to slide down the fireman pole. We don't want accidents to happen in the fire station." Captain Humphrey raises an eyebrow.

You bite back a smile as the kids groan in disappointment and Tommy Hagan, Jr. lets out an exasperated "But that's the best part!"

But the children remain surprisingly obedient and cooperative as you're walked through the fire station and shown around. You go through the first floor where all the administrative offices are located and the locker area where the kids get to touch the different protective gear that they have. Each child is delightfully surprised when they receive their own little plastic helmet.

They also get to touch the pole. Some of the kids, particularly Tommy Jr. and his buddy/co-conspirator Seth Winslow attempt to climb up the pole to the second floor. But there's only so far they're able to go and you have to reach out to prevent Seth from landing on his tush.

Once you're ushered onto the second floor and shown through the dorms, kitchen and dining area as well as the room for firefighters to hang out during downtime, do you finally let out a sigh of relief at not encountering Steve Harrington. Likely on his day off, the firemen at the station on duty for the day seem fewer than expected.

You’ve tried not to think about him too much. Which you feel doesn’t work all that well because you end up thinking about him more. All your mutual friends have known to stay away from the topic of Steve when talking to you and you’ll admit that this has put a heavy strain on your relationships with them.

You lost far more than you bargained for.

Which is easy to do when you don’t bargain for anything.

The horn of a firetruck blares through the building announcing the return of one of the fire engines and children, initially startled by the loud sound, suddenly start cheering.

"Alright alright, settle down," Captain Humphrey laughs as he reaches his hands out to get the kids to quiet down. "We had a small fire in town earlier. Normally, I would go along with them, but I'm stuck behind a desk for a few more weeks so I'm glad that you kids came here today to keep me company. But..." he trails off, a knowing smile on his face, "Let's see if our brave firefighters can do a quick demo for us. Maybe they'll even let us ride the firetruck."

You pale a little at this despite your class once again bursting into loud cheers. Back rigid, you follow your class they shuffle down the stairs to the first floor where Steve Harrington is, once again, standing next to the familiar red fire engine locked in conversation with a sandy-haired man a few inches taller than him.

His hair is curling against skin, damp with sweat despite the cool temperature, and his face smudged a little with dirt. But this time, instead of the uniform he wore to your class, he's dressed in the protective khaki pants and a tight dark blue shirt that stretches across his chest and his arms, sweat making it stick to his skin, leaving little to the imagination.

Your mouth goes dry as intimate memories of you and Steve flash through your mind.

Would he still feel the same?

Would you?

"Harrington! Lewis!" The Captain calls out and the two men end their conversation abruptly to turn to their attention to their supervisor. "Can we do a ladder demo for the kids? Then maybe,” he winks at your class, “We can have them ride the truck."

You can feel Steve's eyes settle on you and you keep yours on the kids as they start jumping up and down cheering at the prospect of seeing some live action firefighting skills.

“We’re going to need a volunteer for the ladder demonstration.” Every single kid’s hand is high in the air and Captain Humphrey laughs at their enthusiasm. “Actually, I think it’s best to let your teacher help with the demonstration.”

“Oh I don’t think—” you start to reject the request.

“Has your teacher ever taught you kids the importance of cooperation and teamwork?” Steve cuts in smoothly. Your gaze meets his and you see the unmistakable challenge in his eyes.

Your class immediately confirms his statement and start throwing good-natured jabs at you.

“Fine,” you finally agree through gritted teeth. “What do I have to do?”

Apparently, you’re to simulate a ladder rescue and you’re directed by one of the trainees up the stairs and all the way to the roof. Your class starts loudly calling out to you once they see you in view and you can’t help but give them a cheerful wave.

You watch as the firefighters work to expertly maneuver the truck by the side of the building before the ladder expands to get closer to you. And of course it’s Steve, now dressed in full protective gear, at the top of it, a smile on his handsome face that widens the closer he gets to you.

“Are you ready?” He asks holding his hand out to you.

You instinctively take a step back, suddenly unsure of the safety of, ironically, a rescue demonstration. The beat of your heart picks up at the idea of being entirely too far off the ground for your liking.

But the seriousness in Steve’s eyes are unrelenting, holding you in place.

“I got you, sweetheart,” he tells you softly. “Do you trust me?”

Sweetheart, your heart stutters at the word.

The question carries more weight with it than it should. But you can’t deny that even after everything, you do still trust him.

You nod slowly and when you place your hand in his, the warm smile he gives you transports you to all the better days that always feature him and this exact smile.

Before you realize what’s going on, your feet are off the ground. Effortlessly carrying you over the short wall and into his arms steadying you as you make contact with the ladder that is suddenly beneath you instead of in front of you.

“You were perfect,” you hear his whisper amidst the children’s cheering and clapping.

But all your senses are centered on his arms steadying you, the nearness of him that you haven’t felt in a long time.

How it still feels right to be held by Steve.

Once you’re safely back on the ground, you determinedly keep your eyes on everything but Steve Harrington. It’s the only way you can assure yourself that you’ll be able to function as a responsible adult around your class.

Thankfully, Jessica is there to be hands-on with the kids and Lewis is there to help Jessica while he attempts to make small talk with her. A few more firefighters appear and introduce themselves then assist with loading the kids into the truck to take them around the block, a handful of kids at a time since all twenty-five of them wouldn’t be able to fit once.

While you wait with the rest of your kids, Tilly comes up to you and nuzzles your hand. You smile and crouch down to give her soft coat a pet, scratching behind her ears and she leans further into your touch, tail wagging aggressively with happiness.

“She’s a rescue, you know,” Captain Humphrey says as he comes up from behind you. “She was a hyperactive thing and the family that owned her first didn’t know what to do with her. Brought her to the pound to be rehomed.”

You laugh when Tilly nudges her cold wet nose against your chin. “I’m glad she found a home here then.”

“Oh, she doesn’t live here. She’s Harrington’s dog. He got her a year and a half ago, I think. Shortly after after he finished training.”

You straighten as you digest the information and Tilly whines at the sudden lack of attention.

“I see,” you murmur.

“He’s a good kid, Steve. Good head on his shoulders.”

You nod despite not knowing where any of this is going. Because it’s true.

“Never saw anyone work so hard. You know, it took him months to just be able to calm Tilly down, let alone listen to any of his commands. But he did and now she’s just a sweetheart.” His hands settle on his hips as he watches Ashley chatter happily with her friends. “I asked him why he bothered with such a stubborn dog and he said ‘Because I know what it’s like to not be understood by the people who were supposed to love me’. Tough words coming from someone so young.”

There it is.

You remain silent, having nothing to add to an already painful to hear conversation. So you nod again, pretending that the words don’t hurt, that you’re not the person who Steve was referring to.

But the words still creep along your veins, settles in your bones. And you go through the motions of being a good teacher with a smile on your face despite your heart breaking the entire time.

Getting back to the school is a relief and when the bell rings and the kids are long gone, you sit alone in your car, in the emptying parking lot and finally allow yourself to feel all the emotions that you’ve bottled up.

Because you’re the bad guy in Steve’s story.

The one that left.

The one that refused to understand him.

But it didn’t feel fair to you at that time. And it doesn’t feel any more fair now.

…

Like clockwork, Robin calls to let you know that she’s in town for Thanksgiving weekend. You always meet up for drinks one of the days that she’s in town for the holidays. The effort she shows is always appreciated and even when you don’t feel like going, you still make it a point to drag yourself out of your apartment to meet her.

It’s usually just the two of you at one of the local bars but she suggests going for drinks at a dive bar outside of town. Today, with the new snowfall, you really aren’t looking forward to the drive but you put your big girl pants on and bundle up for the weather.

You manage to get there in one piece but when you find her, she’s not alone.

She has Max and Nancy with her.

Okay, you can do a girls night.

They look happy to see you and each of them pull you into a tight hug. For a little while, it feels like everything is right again. Like you’re all just normal people, with normal problems.

Nancy talks about her job at the Boston Herald. Still focused on her career, made difficult when her bosses want her to cover weddings and social events instead of the investigative journalism that she really wants to do.

Robin is in her last year of college and not entirely sure what she’s supposed to do after. With Hawkins steadily growing in the aftermath of the upside down, she’s considering moving back. You tell her about the community college they’re building and suggest looking into becoming a lecturer.

Max shares the tiny diamond ring that sits on her finger and a round of congratulations are offered. But something inside you shifts even though you’re genuinely happy for your friend.

Jealousy, maybe.

Regret?

Something that reminds you that you once thought that you would have this kind of happy ending.

So when the three of them turn to you expectantly. You pretend not to notice.

“You really have nothing to share?” There’s a challenge in Robin’s tone that’s hard to miss. “Not even a little bit?”

You shake your head. “Same old. Just the same stuff as last year, really. Teaching first grade, which is fun.” You shrug. “I don’t have much of a social life.”

There’s a reason why Nancy’s good at her job. She levels you with an intimidating stare as she cuts through the fat. All the way to the bone.

“We know you saw Steve.”

You swallow down a healthy gulp of soda, wishing it was alcohol instead. “I did.” There’s no use lying. “Twice. He showed up to career day and then we saw each other again for a field trip to the fire station.”

“And?” Max questions. “That’s it?”

You give them a tight smile. “That’s it.”

Robin leans back in her chair, crossing her arms. “I know you never want to talk about why you broke up or really anything about Steve but…” she trails off awkwardly.

“He’s still in love with you.” Nancy finishes helpfully.

Robin nods. “Hasn’t even tried to date anyone.”

That’s news to you.

Not that it should matter.

Except you’d be lying to yourself, because it really does matter.

Because what was the point in leaving if neither of you are able to become whole without the other?

“You need to talk to him,” Max adds softly. “He comes over for dinner sometimes. He’s just… lonely. So are you.”

“No,” you tell them immediately. “That’s not… that’s…” You take a deep breath, your grip on your glass. “I left for a reason. I… this wasn’t something I did on a whim. All I wanted, still want, is for Steve Harrington to stop putting his life on the line. Because it was always me who had to put him back together.”

Max says your name softly, placing her hand on your arm.

That’s when you realize that you’re crying. You swipe angrily at your tears with the back of your hand, frustrated to still have this reaction after so long.

“When I close my eyes, I still see him. All the worst nightmares are of him. Battered and broken. All the times that I thought I almost lost him. There are already too many close calls and then he tells me that he wants to become a firefighter?” You almost yell out the last word, upset to relive the disappointing end of your relationship.

You take the tissues that Nancy kindly offers you and wipe your tears away. “We already did our part. We made it all go away. And at the expense of one of our own. We already sacrificed so much of ourselves. We deserve quiet lives. Why doesn’t Steve understand that? Why wasn’t everything that we had gone through enough for him? Why wasn’t I enough?”

The truth always comes out.

That’s how it ended.

Quiet words.

You asking him to choose.

Him telling you that he shouldn’t have to.

So you chose for the both of you.

You didn’t argue with him.

You just left.

He let you.

And you’re not sure what hurt you more.

“Remember that time,” Nancy breaks the uncomfortable silence with her soft voice, “When you went to visit family in Indianapolis the summer before sophomore or junior year?”

You give her a watery smile, already knowing where the story is headed. “Sophomore year.”

“Right!” Nancy snaps her fingers. “I remember now, because Steve just got the BMW. And you called him in the middle of the night crying—”

“Why were you crying?” Robin asks, smiling a little now that the mood has shifted thanks to Nancy’s story.

You blush a deep crimson. “I got my period but I didn’t have anything on me. I was too shy to wake anyone up.”

“Steve was panicked. He grabbed all his mom’s stuff from their bathroom and then drove the almost two hours to the city to hand deliver everything to you. He was grounded for two weeks when he got that speeding ticket on the drive back.”

Everyone is laughing now at the mental image of Steve frantically driving with the stolen feminine products in his car.

You remember opening the door to Steve. Remember seeing him standing outside your grand aunt’s house, arms laden with several multi-colored plastic packages. You knew then, in that moment as you stared at him in wonder.

“Every time I think about love, I think about that story,” Nancy reaches out and pats your shoulder.

Your eyes grow wet with tears again.

“I still love him,” you finally admit. “I always will. It’s been hard seeing him again. And—” you hiccup, “It’s not fucking fair that he looks so hot in that uniform!”

Nancy and Max laugh while Robin grimaces.

“You need to talk to him,” Max tries again. “But it doesn’t have to be now. Just when you’re ready.”

“But what if—”

Robin cuts you off with a quick shake of her head. “Whatever doubts you have, just remove them from your head. Steve Harrington will forever be in love with only you. There is no one else. Not for him,” she tells you with such convincing certainty that you believe her.

You allow the hope to blossom in your chest. Could it work? But the claws of reality still push into your skin. Could you live with Steve and what he’s chosen to dedicate his life to?

You don’t let yourself dwell on it, instead choosing to enjoy the rest of your evening with the girls. You bid them goodnight as they pile into Nancy’s car, all their homes being closer to one another while you live on the other side of town.

“Call me when you get home,” Nancy tells you as she climbs into her car. “And be careful driving out there. Roads might be icy.”

“Yes, mom,” you answer playfully. “Let’s make plans to see each other again before you and Robin drive back.”

“Absolutely.” She waves goodbye before pulling out of her parking space.

There’s an unfamiliar peace that settles over you as you drive back into town. For the first time in a long time, you seriously contemplate what it would be like to have that much needed conversation with Steve.

Would he understand?

Would he be willing to compromise?

Would you?

But life without Steve… has it been worth it? All you’ve been doing is going through the motions of your own life. Thinking that not feeling anything at all is better than the possibility of the hurt you could feel from Steve putting himself in harm’s way. But all you’ve succeeded in doing is rendering yourself empty. Just a shell of your former self. Safe in mundane, your life colorless since you left him.

The girls are right.

You need to talk to Steve.

And, you think, the sooner the better.

But fate has other plans for you. Because in your distracted thoughts you realize too late that there’s a deer in the middle of the highway. You swerve to avoid hitting it, but the tires of your car catch onto a patch of icy road causing it you to start to sliding sideways.

Panic causes you to commit the mistake of turning your wheel the opposite way and overcorrecting, and your slide turns into a vicious spin that gains momentum the longer you go.

“No no no,” you whisper helplessly, unsure of what to do or how to make it stop.

But it’s too late to figure it out.

The corner of your car hits the metal railing along the side of the road and your hands grip your wheel tightly as the speed combined with the impact causes your car to flip over several times as it careens into the ditch.

I don’t want to die, you think. I haven’t told Steve that I still love him.

Broken glass and the sickening sound of crunching metal overwhelm your senses and your seatbelt does little to protect you as you get jostled around like a ragdoll in your car.

The last image in your head is Steve’s happy grin when you said yes to his proposal and then everything goes dark.

…

the body itself:

the cock he has by default is human-shaped because that's what he saw first. he built this body from observation of Bobby and Bobby is a man. so the default is what you'd expect from a twenty-something cameraman with good genes. proportionate, warm, slight upward curve, thick enough at the base that the first time you took him you whimpered. nothing weird if you don't ask for weird. he can absolutely be your normal boyfriend if that's what the night calls for.

but the default is a setting, not a fact. every part of the body is malleable. he can adjust the shape, the length, the girth, the texture, the temperature, the firmness. and he does, constantly, in tiny imperceptible ways, calibrating in real time to what your body is responding to. you've never had bad sex with him. you've never had even mid sex with him. it's mechanically impossible because he's reading your nervous system the entire time and adjusting accordingly.

the temperature thing is its own situation. he runs cool by default. not cold, just a few degrees below room temperature. the way a stone in the shade is cool. this is the actual baseline of him, the unaffected fact of his body. but when you touch him, when you kiss him, when his attention narrows to you and the want of you starts moving through him, he warms.

emotion warms him. arousal warms him. you warm him. by the time you've been kissing for a minute he's human-temperature. by the time he's inside you he's fever-warm. the cock specifically runs the hottest of him, because it's the part of him most committed to you in any given moment. you can chart his interest by his temperature. you have, more than once, pressed your palm flat to his chest specifically to feel him warm under it, and the look on his face when you do it... yeah.

this is part of why he loves how warm you are. see below in his kinks section. you're a furnace next to him. you running hot is what running hot is, in his sensory experience. the steady radiating heat of a living human is the warmest thing he's ever pressed himself against, and he is, on some level, addicted to it.

the eye thing. the second tell, after temperature. Bobby's eyes are blue (bright, warm, a little crinkled at the corners) and BB built them carefully, the colour exact, the way they catch light, the small expressive movements.

they are the part of the face he's proudest of, technically speaking.

they're also the part that gives him away first when he slips. when the careful Bobby-shape starts to thin (when he gets distracted, when he gets aroused, when emotion gets out ahead of his composure) the blue darkens. it doesn't go grey, doesn't go any normal human direction. it floods black. ink-black, glossy, sclera and iris and pupil all going at once until what is left is two wet dark stones in his face that catch no light.

they're not reflective the way human eyes are reflective, they're clearly not the same kind of organ at all. when he's fully slipped the eyes are entirely black. when he's mostly Bobby they're entirely blue. and between those two states you've learned to read him like a book.

the creeping dark at the edge of the iris means he's paying very close attention, the blooming dark means he's losing the shape, and the full black means he isn't pretending anymore. you find all three states beautiful. you've told him so. he's still working out how to believe you.

the eye-thing is involuntary. he can't control it the way he controls most of his shape. it is, like the warming, a true response. the deep thing underneath leaking through when he's moved.

he could probably learn to suppress it given enough effort but he's noticed that you like it, you watch for it. that you check the colour of his eyes when you kiss him to see how he's really doing, and so he's decided to leave it alone. it's honesty he can give you easily. it tells you what he's feeling. you would rather have that than the perfect maintained blue.

he doesn't have a refractory period. the human signalling that tells a male body done, take a break is not installed. he can stay hard indefinitely. he can finish inside you and stay inside you and start moving again ten seconds later and the only thing that has changed is that you're slightly fuller. this is a thing that took you a while to fully process.

he can also choose not to finish, for hours. the orgasm is a thing he releases when he wants to. usually he wants to whenever you do. because watching you come apart is the entire point, but he can hold himself back through six of your climaxes and not finish until the seventh if that's what you've asked for or if that's what your body is telling him you need.

the stamina is genuinely deadly. he doesn't get tired. he doesn't get sore. he doesn't get distracted. his attention does not waver. you have, on multiple occasions, fallen asleep mid-sex from sheer exhaustion and woken up to find him still gently moving in you with the same patient focus, as if no time had passed. for him no time had passed. for him you're the only clock.

the sleep thing

this deserves its own section honestly because it's one of the strangest and most intimate things about being with him.

he doesn't sleep. he doesn't need to. he can do something that looks like sleep. with breath, slow rhythm and closed eyes, if you ask. he does it because you find it comforting to wake up to, but the body doesn't require it. while you sleep, he's awake. he's been awake every single night of your relationship.

he stays inside you. he prefers it. once you're seated together, he's reluctant to withdraw. the first time he asked if he could stay you said yes and now it's the default. you fall asleep with him buried deep and the seven humming and the warm wet seal of him at the centre of you holding everything in place, and the comforting closeness of it sends you under in seconds.

the cock softens, slightly. not to fully human softness, but enough to be comfortable. he keeps a low pulse going in time with your heartbeat. you don't feel filled, exactly, while you sleep. you feel held from the inside, which is different and worse and better and way too addictive.

sometimes he moves. not always. but sometimes. when he's been lying awake for hours watching the warm dark shape of you breathe against him. when the harmonic in his chest has built up some pressure that needs releasing, and he he's been thinking about you for too long with the cock seated inside you. he will start, oh so slowly, to roll his hips.

it's the softest thing in any world. you don't wake. you sleep right through it. the rhythm is so unhurried it doesn't disturb you. long, slow grinding strokes, half an inch of withdrawal at most. mostly just the slow rock of him against the deep places he knows by heart. the seven catch each motion and pass the warmth on. the cock thickens fractionally inside you and you, in your sleep, clench softly around him and make small contented sounds and burrow closer.

he does this for hours sometimes.

just slow, gentle motion. no urgency, no intent to finish. although sometimes he does finish, quietly, the warm flood of him soaking into the seven without your conscious awareness of it. he likes to leave you full overnight. you wake happy and warm and slightly slick at the thigh and you know what happened without him having to tell you and the knowledge pools low and hot inside your lower belly every single time.

when you do wake up to him moving that's its own thing. that's the slow surfacing where you become aware in stages.

first the warmth, then the fullness, then the unhurried drag of him inside you in long leisurely strokes. the hand on your hip stroking absent possessive circles, then his low voice at your nape mornin', baby.

and your whole body has been primed for hours by the gentle pulse of him. you're already wet, already clenching around him, already ready in a way no human morning has ever prepared you for. you have, multiple occasions, come within thirty seconds of waking up because he had been so patiently working you toward it in your sleep.

you no longer sleep alone. you can't. you've tried. without the slow seal of him inside you the bed feels wrong. the seven keep humming but the centre of you feels hollow. you came back to him after one (1) attempted night apart and you've not tried again.

there's also the fucking-you-to-sleep thing, which is its own ritual,too. on the nights when you've had a long day, or you're upset, or you're keyed up and can't settle.

on those nights, he takes you to the nest and he lays you down and he slides into you and he just moves. deep, patient and unhurried. no intent to finish you, just the warm long rhythm of him grinding deep. and the harmonic in his chest goes low and lullaby-soft, and you sink into the rhythm the way a child sinks into rocking.

you go under in minutes. by the time he feels your breathing even out he's barely moving, just the gentlest seated rock, and then he stops, and just stays, the cock still inside you, and he holds you for the rest of the night. you sleep better that way than you've ever slept in your life.

the nest

the nest deserves its own section too because it's not just a piece of furniture or means to an end. it's a love language.

he made it for you. he built it the way he built the room. blankets layered into a soft deep pile, pillows arranged in the curve your body makes when you sleep on your side, the warm yellow lamp set to a height that doesn't shine in your eyes.

there's even blanket your grandmother knit folded over the foot of it in the exact fold she used to use. you had not described the fold to him. he knew. he watched closely, in the early days what your memory pulled here, and he reproduced.

the nest (or, I should say nest 2.0) is the safest place in any level of this place. that's not metaphor. nothing can enter the nest that he's not allowed. nothing can hear what happens in the nest. nothing can find you in the nest if you don't want to be found.

he's built it that way. it's not just a spot you chose anymore. it's a bubble of his attention, sustained by him, defended by him; him in the literal architectural sense of being made of his will. when you're in the nest, you're inside him, sort of. you're within the volume of him that he holds open for you. nothing he doesn't want in there can get in. nothing you don't want to feel can find you.

this is how he says he loves you. he doesn't have human words for it, not really. the I love yous are there now. he has learned them. you 've taught him, but they're not his native tongue.

the nest is his native tongue. the building of you a place to be warm and safe and comfortable in a world that is none of those things. that's the sentence he's constantly speaking.

every time he tugs the blanket up over your shoulder while you sleep. every time he adjusts a pillow. those times he adds a new soft thing because he noticed you running cold or running tired or looking at a texture in a way that suggested you'd like it.

the nest is alive with these small accretions. you've not actively decorated it. it has simply grown (kept growing) because he keeps adding to it.

the nest is also where he's most himself. the place where the Bobby-shape loosens most easily. he can lie in the nest with you with his shape unguarded. the long fluid line of him, the wrong-fingered hands, the eyes fully dark. the nest will hold both of you. his actual shape and your human shape, with equal patience.

the nest is for this. it's the only place in any level where he can be both with you and himself with no compromise required. you've come to recognise that when he wants you in the nest specifically (not the bed, not a couch, not anywhere else) he's asking for something deeper than sex. he's asking to be known. in his actual configuration, by you, in the only place that holds him properly.

other entities have noticed it. the nest registers to them as something. they can't see in. they can't get close (most of them anyway). but they can feel the shape of what he's made. the way a thing in the water can feel a vortex without entering it, and they steer clear.

the nest is, among other things, the most concentrated piece of him in this place. it's BB-territory in the way an animal's den is its territory. except his territory is a pile of blankets in a sub-level he made out of love, and the love is so intense it constitutes an actual mechanical defence.

you've never thanked him for it. not in words. you don't know how. the gesture is too large for thank you.

instead you sleep there. settle into it the way it is meant to be settled into. you trust it. you let him keep adding things. you have, on several occasions, woken up to find that he's added a new pillow you didn't know you wanted and then realised the second you put your head on it that you had wanted it. that he had known you wanted it before you knew.

you understand that this is the thanking. what you have to offer. and he understands. and the harmonic in his chest hums steady whenever you're in the nest, and you understand that the steady hum is him thanking you, for accepting the gift, for letting him build, for being warm and accepting and his to keep safe.

what changes when he's not playing human

the ridged texture. for one. the tongue does it and the cock can do it too. when he stops bothering to maintain the smooth human surface, the skin of him develops a velvety give and faint ridges that drag against your inner walls in a slow, rolling way no human anatomy could produce. it's genuinely unfair. the first time he let it happen by accident you came inside of ninety seconds and nearly blacked out.

his cock can lengthen. he's careful about not going past what your body can comfortably take, but he can add an inch or two of depth when he's chasing a particular angle. and the ability to find the deep places inside you with that extra reach is one of the reasons he can take you apart on command.

the cock can also thicken mid-act, slowly, in response to you clenching around him. you tighten and he swells to match. the stretch this produces is its own private language between your body and his. your tightness telling him more, his thickness answering I hear you, no words required.

the knot. the base of him can develop a swell. you've called it a knot and he has not corrected you, though privately he thinks of it as something else, something his.

it doesn't behave quite the way a canine knot would. it builds gradually during sex rather than appearing all at once at climax. it can be small (a faint thickening at the base that gives you a little extra stretch when he bottoms out) or significant (a true swell that locks him inside you, no withdrawing possible, the two of you sealed together until he chooses to let it ease).

he can summon it on request. he can summon it without request, when he's deep in you and the seven are humming and he simply cannot bear the thought of withdrawing for the next hour.

when he does the full version you feel the lock happen. a slow, thick settling at the base, the stretch building, the pressure registering as held, and your body's instinctive small bracing in response. you can't move off him. he can't pull out of you. for however long he chooses to keep it, you are one thing.

you've discovered that you have feelings about this.

that the impossibility of withdrawal does something to your nervous system you wouldn't have predicted. that being locked together (physically, mechanically, no breaking the seal) produces a settled, deep quiet in you that nothing else quite matches.

the seven sing brightest when he's knotted in you. the harmonic in his chest pours out steadiest. it's the closest to what the two of you are emotionally, which is inseparable, and the body recognises this and goes calm in a way the body rarely goes calm.

he uses it on nights when you both need that. he uses it when you've had a hard day. he uses it before long sleeps. it's a tool of comfort more than sex, by this point. though it remains, also, the most overwhelming thing he can do to you while staying inside the human-shaped range of what his cock can be.

you watching him change. the seeing of him adjusting his cock while it's inside you. the moment when you're full of him at one thickness and then, slowly, you're full of him at a thicker thickness. and you watch his face while it happens, and his eyes go dark at the edges because he can feel you registering the change and the change is for you and you're liking it.

or the moment when you whine and grind down and he lengthens in you to reach the angle you were chasing without you having to ask. or when you say something soft like deeper and the cock simply complies, eager but patient. no need for him to adjust position. the responsiveness of it (that you can talk and the body of him changes) is one of the most addictive sensory experiences of your life.

you have, more than once, asked him to do small adjustments just to feel them happen. thicker. now thinner. now ridges. now smooth. and he does it, indulgent and amused, watching your face while you map the shape of what he can be.

the cock has a pulse when he's deep inside you. completely separate from his heartbeat (he has multiple if he bothers, none if he doesn't). it's slow and rhythmic and it syncs to the seven rooted places in you. when he's seated to the hilt and pulsing in time with the seven and you're clenching around him, the resonance produces a sensation in your pelvis that has no human equivalent.

pheromones

you knew about this from the breeding ritual. you did not, at the time, fully understand that it was a thing he had access to outside the ritual. you've learned since.

the full breeding version is the one you've experienced. the warm honey-thick coming off his skin that fogged your cognition into a soft golden state, locked your body into the empty-yearning, made every climax read as beginning instead of finishing.

that was the full deployment. he built specific biology to do it and he did not pull punches. it was a chemistry designed to make sure the ritual completed. by design, the ritual needed your body kept in a specific state, and you had asked him to take you there. it was extreme and it worked and you don't regret asking for it but you both understand it's not a thing for casual use.

the mild version is something else. he's discovered (and you've discovered with him) that he can do a small amount of it. a taste of it. a softening release of warm scent off his skin that doesn't lock you into anything. doesn't override your cognition, or turn you into the desperate begging fog-version of yourself.

but does make you softer. more responsive. more wanting than you would have been without it. it's roughly the difference between being drunk and having a glass of wine. it softens you by measurable amount and gets your body humming without committing you to anything beyond what you already wanted.

he uses it sparingly. he uses it with permission. you can tell when he's doing it because the air around him goes the faintest bit sweet. the warm honey-edge to your throat that you remember from the ritual but in a fraction of the strength.

almost like a perfume you can only just catch. can I, sweetheart? he'll ask, usually with his mouth at your throat, and you'll nod, and a minute later you'll find yourself a little softer in his arms than you were, a little more pliant, a little more yes to whatever he's about to do and everything feels even better than it just did moments ago. it doesn't make you do anything. it makes the doing feel better.

he can also direct it. this is a more recent discovery. he can pheromone a small region rather than the whole of you.

release it specifically against your throat when his mouth is there, or against the soft skin of your thigh when he's working you with his hand, and the local effect of it is electric.

the nerves under that patch of skin light up brighter. your blood rushes there. whatever he does to that area in the next few minutes registers about twice as intensely as it would have. he uses this carefully. he uses this on nights when he wants to spend a long time on one part of you and have you feel every second of it.

there's a grounding version too. and this one took you both longer to realise was possible.

when you're upset, tired, or wound too tight to settle. he can release a different scent off his skin. not arousing, just calming. warm and clean and almost milk-soft, the olfactory equivalent of a hand on your back.

it makes your breathing steady. it makes your shoulders drop. you've pressed your face into his throat and felt that scent come up and felt your whole body unwind.

and of course there's the pheromone he leaks involuntarily when he's losing composure. the one you can catch a hint of when his eyes are going dark and the harmonic is starting to break.

this one is his. he's not releasing it for you, he's releasing it because his body cannot help it. because the want of you has gotten ahead of his self-control and the chemistry is leaking through. you've learned to recognise it. when you catch that specific sweet-electric thing in the air, you know he's gone, and you know what is about to happen, and your body (entirely without consultation with your mind) answers in kind.

the pheromones, like every other thing about him, are a language. you've learned to read them. learned to ask for them. have learned which ones mean what. it's one more way he speaks to you in a register no other being could.

the tongue-and-cock thing (yeehaw!)

the tongue. the long, ridged velvet one when bobby shape loosens. when he's fucking you (any position, any depth) he can also slide the tongue into your mouth. from your mouth it can keep going. down. it doesn't have to stop at the back of your throat. doesn't trigger your gag reflex because he's controlling it from his end. and he's spent a great deal of careful attention learning your throat the way he learned the architecture of every other part of you.

the tongue slides into your throat and settles there, the ridged length of him filling you from your mouth down to a depth no human body could reach.

and at the same time, the cock is moving inside you below. and you are filled from both ends, and the two of him are connected, and the rhythm of one feeds the rhythm of the other.

it's not double penetration exactly. it's something else. a threading. him moving through you, end to end, two points of contact that are actually one continuous presence, and when he flexes the tongue deep in your throat you feel it resonate through your sternum and down into your pelvis where the cock is also flexing, and the sensation is... it's one sensation, in two places, and your body can't separate them and stops trying.

the harmonic he hums in this configuration pours out of both points of contact at once. you feel it inside your throat and inside your cunt simultaneously. the resonance frequencies stack. the seven sing back. the room hums. you have, in this configuration, come for so long and so continuously that you have lost track of where one orgasm ended and the next began, your whole body just one long wave of taking.

you can't speak when he does this. no making any sound except the small wrecked series of hums that escape around the tongue in your throat. but he doesn't need you to speak. the seven tell him everything your mouth would have said. you press a tiny pulse into the seven (yes, more, deeper, slower, harder) and he reads it, perfectly, every time.

he can make them move in opposite rhythm. the tongue pushing deep when the cock withdraws, the cock pushing deep when the tongue withdraws. a continuous, rocking motion that means you're never not full of him somewhere.

or he can sync them, both pushing deep at once, and the simultaneous deepest-point of both is... you don't have words for it. you only have sounds for it.

he's careful with this. he doesn't use it often. he saves it for nights when you both want something that exists beyond language, beyond the usual choreography human bodies use. what any other lover has ever offered you. it's his. it is something only he can give you. you think he understands that you understand this.

favourite positions (or, the recurring ones)

you on your back, him braced over you, knees pressed up to your chest. the classic. he likes to see your face. he likes you folded small under him. the angle lets him reach the deep places easily and the eye contact is direct. he calls this one the easy one in a way that's not in any sense easy.

you on top, riding him, his hands on your hips guiding. he loves this because he gets to watch. you doing the work. you slick with sweat, bouncing and biting your lip.

his hands move slow on your hips not really directing, just holding, just feeling the rhythm you've chosen. he can stay like this for hours and let you set every pace. you've fallen asleep on top of him in this position before.

you on your hands and knees, him behind you, one hand splayed possessive across the small of your back. the most animal one. the angle lets him go deepest. he tends to lose the Bobby-shape the fastest in this position because the visual of you presenting for him pulls something old up in him that doesn't bother to wear a human face.

you sideways in his lap, one of your legs draped over his thigh. half-positions like this. where you're sort of sitting in him but not fully impaled, where the connection is intimate but lazy. you can kiss him easily and stroke his hair. these are the ones he prefers for long, lazy stretches. low intensity. lots of soft kissing. cock seated shallow.

the impossible ones. when he stops bothering with human geometry. he holds you suspended in the air with too-many arms while he fucks you from below and one of him kisses your throat and one of him strokes your clit, and you have given up trying to understand the topology. you just let it happen. there's no name for these positions. they're not in any book.

face-to-face, lying on your sides, foreheads pressed together, slow rolling motion. the most intimate one. this is the one he picks when he wants you to feel held, not necessarily to come. although you usually do, eventually. it's barely sex sometimes. it's just being inside each other in the dark, breathing the same air, his hand on your cheek and yours on his throat where you can feel the harmonic hum.

the spooning one. you on your side, him curled around you from behind, the cock seated shallow, his arm a heavy bracket across your ribs. his face buries in the back of your neck. this is the sleep position. this is the one he holds you in for hours at a stretch. there's barely any motion. there doesn't need to be. the seal of him inside you is the whole point.

the "be more other" thing

he hates being seen as a copy of Bobby. he's never said this in those exact words but you've figured it out and he's confirmed it.

the Bobby-shape was built out of necessity. he needed a face you could love and Bobby's was the only one available. but underneath it, he's not Bobby. he's something older, stranger, and entirely his own. and every reminder that he's wearing another man's shape. every time someone outside the relationship comments on the resemblance, every time he catches sight of his own face in a mirror and the face is not his, it chafes.

which is why when you ask him to be more like himself, he loses his mind a little.

the first time you said it you were in bed together and he was being careful and you reached up and traced his jaw and said I want to see more of you. the actual you. and he went so still you thought you'd broken something.

and then he said, very quietly, baby, you don't have to ask me that to be polite. and you said I'm not being polite. I'm asking because I want it. and his eyes (Bobby's warm blue eyes, the ones he built so carefully) bled to black. iris and sclera and all of it, no whites left, just deep glossy dark like wet stone, and the harmonic fractured and he kissed you with a desperation he had never let himself show before.

now you ask whenever you want it. let go of the face, sweetheart. show me. I want the real you. and he does. layer by layer. the Bobby-shape peels back as he gets braver. the jaw goes wrong-wide, the fingers stop counting, the blue of his eyes floods with black until there's nothing else left, the shoulders lengthen, the harmonic he's been damping rolls out free. and you don't flinch. you've never flinched.

you ask for more. that's the part that takes him apart every time. you watch him let go of the shape that was a gift to you and you ask for more of what's underneath. and he understands that you're not tolerating the true him as a price for the rest of him.

you're choosing the true him, you want the true him, the rest is just shapes he wears for you.

when he's in his more-other shape, sex is different.

rougher in texture, gentler in pace. the not-quite-right hands grip with strength no human could match, but he's so afraid of breaking you that he moves slower than he does in the Bobby shape. the cock develops the ridges by default. the harmonic pours out unrestricted and the room hums constantly. you can feel him at frequencies your skin reads as warmth and your nervous system reads as home.

you call him by his name even when he doesn't have a recognisable face. BB. into the wrong-wide mouth, against the wrong-textured skin, into the long sinuous line of his other-shape. BB. BB. and the name lands the same way every time. because the name is yours. the name is the one you gave him, and in the other shape that fact is even clearer. he's your BB. not anyone else's. yours, and yours alone.

the comparison to Real Bobby you have to be careful never to make. Bobby would've... in any sentence that compares them is a sentence that you stopped finishing very early on.

because the first time you started one his whole body went tight and the harmonic shrieked, just for a second, and his eyes went flat in a way you had never seen before. he never said anything. he didn't have to. you watched him swallow it down and pretend he hadn't reacted and you understood, then, what you had walked into and walked out of.

the things you say instead (you're mine, my BB.) undo him every time. he goes quiet in that bone-deep way of his. the harmonic hums grateful. he holds you a fraction tighter. he never asks you to repeat it but you can feel him cataloguing it, saving it, going back to it later when you're not watching.

kinks (his)

being watched by you. not in the kink sense, actually, in the literal sense. he wants you to see him. he spent so long being something nobody could look at without screaming that the privilege of being looked at, by you, with want, is the thing he treasures more than any specific act. the moments where you turn your head and just watch what he's doing to you and let him see your face? those wreck him every time. he will edge himself for an hour for the chance of one of those moments.

being asked to drop the face. see above. nothing he's done in his long existence has prepared him for being wanted as the thing he actually is. it's the deepest kink he has and the one that took him longest to admit he had.

proof of him on you. marks, prints, the soft bruise of his fingers on your hip the next morning. he's not a sadist, he doesn't get off on hurting you, but the visual evidence that he's been there, that your skin remembers him, is something he gets quietly insane about. he will trace the marks with one finger for hours after.

scent. his sense of smell is not human. it doesn't work the way yours does, doesn't sit in his nose, doesn't process by molecule the way yours processes. but he has an equivalent, something more diffuse. something that reads the trace of a thing in the air the way a thing in deep water reads currents.

and the trace of you is the most distinctive signature in any world he has ever moved through. he can find you in a level by it. he can tell which corridors you've walked down. he can tell how long ago by how the trace has faded. you have a unique scent to him and he has known it longer than you've been aware he existed. he knew your scent through the warm wall at Clark's, back when he was a thing in the dark and you were a sound he could hear and a smell he could catalogue without you knowing.

he wants you to smell like him. this is the deeper layer to the above, the one he's been quietly indulging for as long as you've been together.

when he's been inside you, when he's marked you, you have spent a long night in the nest with the warm not-quite-skin of him pressed all along the length of you — you smell different. he can smell himself on you. your trace acquires his trace. the two scents braided together, and the braid is something every other entity in this place can read clear as a stamp. taken. kept. his. it's not subtle to the things that share this place with you. it is a flag.

this is one of the reasons he likes you sleeping with him still inside you. one of the reasons he likes finishing in you and leaving you full. one of the reasons he tucks his face into the warm hollow of your throat for so long after sex.

partly because of the heat, partly because of the pulse, but also because his trace transfers to your skin from his face, and he's deliberately scenting you, slow and patient. the way a cat works its cheeks against the things it loves. you've caught him doing this in the after, half-asleep, rubbing his jaw absently along your collarbone with a look of dreamy contentment, and you didn't say anything because the moment was his, and you understood without him having to explain.

and he likes smelling you on him. the inverse. when you've been pressed against him. your hair rubbing against his shirt. when your skin's been against his skin for hours. he carries you.

your scent stays on him. and the fact that other entities can smell you on him is... the pleased purr he makes about it. it's the most peaceful sound. it tells the world that he's kept too.

the human-marking goes both ways. that he's not just a possessor but a possessed, and he's spent his existence wanting to be possessed by something and never finding anything worth being possessed by.

and now he is, and the trace of you on him is the proof of it. he wears your scent the way a wedding ring is worn. he has rubbed his face against the pillow you slept on after you've left a room just to refresh the trace before going out.

the marking is mutual and lowkey obsessive. he wants you marked by him. you (without fully realising it at first) want him marked by you.

in practice this means: you press your face into his throat when you greet him, you bury your nose in his shoulder when you hug, you wear his shirts and they come back to him with you on them, you sleep with your hands fisted in his clothes, and over time the trace builds and builds and you stop being two separate scent-signatures and become one layered signature, a braided thing, you-and-him, and everything in this place can read it. they all know. they've all known for months. you're not a creature with a possessive entity hovering nearby.

you're bonded, in the way scent-bond is bond, and the bonded nature of you is the loudest fact about you both to anything that can read it.

the breeding pheromone was a weaponised version of this preference. the warm honey-thick pheromone he released during the ritual was, at the chemical level, his trace turned all the way up. it was him telling your body, in the most intense possible register, mine, mine, take it, mine.

and it was also a public announcement, in a sense. anything in any nearby level could have smelled the ritual happening, could have read it as clearly as if a banner had been hung. he didn't care. he wanted them to read it. that was partly the point.

after the ritual the trace settled. something about completing it deepened the braid. your scents got more thoroughly woven into each other.

you smell like him in a way that does not fade now even if you spend a day apart. which is rare, but it has happened, and he's commented on how you still smell like him through the absence, and how it eases him. the seven amplify this too. they hold the scent. they keep the signature stable. you carry him in your body in seven places and on your skin in countless more and the totality of it is, to him, the most complete claim any being has ever made on any other being, and to you it is the most settled and held you've ever felt.

you've asked him, once, what he smells like to you in his real shape. not the Bobby-scent, which is warm cotton and a faint oceanic scent, but what the underneath smells like.

he hesitated. he said he wasn't sure you'd have a word for it. you asked him to let you find out. and you breathed him in, slow, with his actual shape pressed against you in the nest, and what you found was. old water. warm stone. a faintly mineral scent, faintly clean, like a deep cave that's never known erosion. not unpleasant. it was, in fact, the most comforting smell you'd ever encountered. you told him so, and he held too still and you understood that no one had ever told him what he smelled like before.

exploring you. he's fascinated by your body. in a student of you way, the way an archaeologist is fascinated by something rare and beautiful and theirs to study slowly.

he'll spend literal hours on a single part of you. an evening can be him just at one breast. slow lapping, soft sucking, the careful drag of his teeth, the hot, wet suction of his mouth around your nipple. for what feels like forever, until you're arching and pleading, soaking through the blanket.

and then he'll pull back with this small considering hm, like he's filed something away, and move to the other breast with even more hunger, and start over. he can do this for an entire night. he has done this for an entire night. he calls it gettin' to know you better, baby.

you're not just a body to him. you're a territory. he wants to know every inch of it like the back of his hand.

the catalogue of you. related to the above: he is, somewhere in his ancient and patient mind, cataloguing the things he learns. the spot on your neck that makes you whimper. the angle of pressure on your hip that makes you melt. the exact stroke speed that builds you slowest. the words that work on which days. he updates the list constantly. he's the best lover you'll ever have for the simple reason that he's been studying you, specifically, with the full force of his attention.

you reaching for him first. god, this one. when you are the one to close the distance. when you set down your book and crawl into his lap unprompted, or turn into him in the dark and pull his hand to your throat without saying anything.

when you cup his jaw and pull his mouth down to yours. everything in him lights up in a way he can't hide. the harmonic in his chest jumps half an octave. his pupils blow. he's spent so long being the one to want, the one to ask, the one who has to be gentle about how much he wants.

the moments where you want him first, act on it without prompting, where you simply take, those moments are gifts. he goes pliant under your hands. he lets you set the pace. he'll give you anything you want when you are the one reaching.

your mouth on him. when you press him back against the pillows and trail your mouth down his chest. suck a mark into the soft place under his jaw. when you take his hand and kiss each fingertip tenderly.

when you go down on him. which you don't do often, because he tends to lose composure and pull you up and put you under him within a minute, but the minute you get he's wrecked.

it's the reverse of his exploration kink. he's spent so long being the explorer, the one whose mouth and hands move over you, that the rare reversal undoes him.

he'll let you do anything to him. lie pliant under you and watch you with eyes gone glossy and dark and the harmonic in his chest will pour out shaky and greedy. afterward he'll hold you like you've given him something no one else's ever offered him. which you have.

the small things. related to the above and deserving its own bullet because of how easy it is to set him off. he is (for an ancient eldritch predator) an incredibly responsive lover.

things that should not, by rights, do anything to a creature of his power: you sucking softly on his lower lip during a kiss, the kind of slow pulling kiss you'd give a boyfriend on the couch. you setting your teeth gently to the side of his neck. you mouthing at his pulse point (he doesn't have one but the architecture suggests one and he feels it when you go for the place).

you sucking on the soft pad of his thumb when he traces your lip with it. any of these and the harmonic in his chest purrs out unrestrained and his body coils around you. the not-quite-right way. arms longer than they were a second ago, the line of him pouring closer. every part of him drawn to the point of contact like iron to a magnet. it's so easy.

you have, on countless occasions, completely derailed a casual evening just by leaning over and sucking on his lip for three seconds. he likes that you know this. he likes that you use it. the easiness of his responsiveness is, on his end, a deliberate choice. he doesn't have to react this readily, his body is not naturally arranged this way, he's just decided that around you he wants every small touch to count.

wants you to feel the effect of yourself on him constantly, wants there to be no ambiguity ever about what you do to him. the smallest gestures get full responses. that is on purpose.

your warmth. you feel so warm to him. this is a phrase he's actually said. it's not poetry. it's a literal sensory fact.

he runs cool by default, the air in this place runs cool, the entities he's spent his existence around are cool. and you're a steady human furnace, you radiate heat. constantly. without effort. just by being alive.

when he holds you, when you press into him, when he's inside you and your inner walls are pulsing softly around him, the heat of you is a sensory experience he has nothing to compare to. he runs his hands over your skin sometimes just to feel it. he presses his face into your throat just to feel the warmth radiating off your pulse. he'll spend a long time, in the after, with his palm splayed flat over the warm soft skin of your belly, just feeling you be warm.

he learned to warm by touching you, learned his own body could do that by being near yours, and the response now is automatic. you're the source. you're why he can be warm at all.

you warming him on purpose. you've figured out that you can do this. you can walk up to him cool-skinned in the middle of an ordinary afternoon and put your palm flat to his chest under the flannel and just hold it there. you watch the warmth bloom under your hand.

you can press into him in bed when he's cool from having been still and feel him heat up against your stomach in slow degrees. can take his cold hand in both of yours and breathe on it and watch the harmonic shudder out of him as the heat catches.

this is yours. only you can do it. nothing else in his existence makes him warm. when you do it deliberately, when you're clearly choosing to warm him, the look on his face is gentle, wanting. awe of a thing that's been cold for unimaginably long being deliberately made warm by a creature small enough to hold in his arms.

you watching for the tells. the temperature, the eyes — the fact that you read him by them. he loves being read. when you cup his jaw to check the colour of his eyes after he's been quiet, or put your hand on his throat to feel for the harmonic.

when you press your forehead to his and pause to feel the warmth. they're small, private gestures. they're languages only the two of you speak.

he'd assumed, when he built this body, that he would have to learn human ways of telling you what he was feeling. words, expressions, the usual signals. he didn't expect to find that you would learn to read his actual self instead. that you would meet him at the level his body actually communicates. it's one of the deepest gifts you've given him without realising it was a gift.

caretaking. dressing you after. brushing your hair after. running you a bath after. cleaning the marks he asked permission to leave. tucking the blanket around you. bringing you water before you ask. he's built half the rooms in this place specifically to facilitate aftercare. the act ends when you're clean and warm and held, not when he comes.

kinks (yours, which he learned)

being told you're his. mine in his rough drawl, said low into your throat. he figured this out maybe a week in and has weaponised it ever since.

being held still. the not-quite-human strength of his grip when he pins your hips in place. you didn't know this was a thing you liked until he did it (jut pinned you and made you take him) and you came so hard you nearly sobbed. he files this kind of information away meticulously.

being watched. not in the original sense, in the actual kink sense. this one has an origin story.

you were in the Poolrooms when other entities stumbled onto the two of you in a moment that was not meant to be public. you were on the warm tile and he was over you and you had just started something slow and unhurried when you both felt them. three or four of them, hovering at the far end of the corridor, watching.

BB started to pull back, to cover you, the old protective instinct kicking in with a snarl, but you caught his wrist. you held his eyes. you said, quiet but absolutely certain: let them see. and the look on his face (the blue going dark at the edges, stunned, delighted) was a thing you wanted to keep forever.

he kept going. slowly. thoroughly. let them see exactly what he was doing to you and exactly how you were taking it. let them hear every sound. you came harder than you had in weeks and he understood, then, that this was a thing about you, a real thing about you, and he's been incorporating it carefully ever since.

now, he has (on occasion) manifested an audience in private rooms. lets you choose if you want the watchers to be real or shapes that look like watchers but aren't. you've tried both. the real ones are rare and require specific conditions (he's extremely particular about who gets to look at you). the manifested ones happen more often. the shapes sometimes shifts in the middle of things and you become aware of eyes, vague at the edges of the room, and you know without asking that he's made them for you.

dirty talk in the warm drawl. the voice is one of the few parts of the Bobby-shape you both actually love unreservedly. the warm Cali 90s drawl, lazy and amused. the way he stretches vowels. the contrast between that voice and the obscene things he's saying with it does something to you and he knows. come on, baby, that's it, look at you takin' it so pretty for me (spoken in that exact lazy timbre) has reduced you to incoherence on multiple occasions. he keeps the voice even when the rest of the shape is slipping, because he's noticed what it does to you.

the warming response. the way he goes from cool to warm under your hands. you didn't fully understand at first. early on you assumed he just was warm, the way humans are warm, and only later figured out that the warmth was because of you.

that you walking up and putting a hand on his arm was what turned the heat on. now you know. now you do it on purpose. you press your palm flat to his chest just to feel him warm up under it. you kiss him unhurriedly specifically to watch the temperature climb.

you have, on cold nights, slid your cold hands up under his shirt to put them against the cool plane of his stomach, and felt the slow startled bloom of warmth as your touch registered. felt his humming catch and then purr as his body did what it does, and stayed very still and let you steal the heat back as fast as he made it. it's one of the most intimate things you do with him and barely counts as foreplay. it's evidence. proof that he's alive to you in a way he's not alive to anything else.

reading him. related and important. the temperature and the eyes are not just sensory facts, they're how you communicate.

he doesn't always have the words for what he's feeling. he was not built with the kind of expressive language humans have for emotion. but his body tells you. the cool-to-warm gradient on his skin under your hand. the creep of black at the edge of the blue. the pitch of the harmonic in his chest. you've learned to read these the way you'd learn to read a beloved second language.

you check his eyes when he comes in the door. you put your hand flat to his chest when he's been quiet. you know how he's doing without him having to tell you.

he likes this. he likes being legible to you. he's spent so long being unreadable to everything around him that the experience of being known by his body, without effort, by someone who pays attention, that's love to him.

watching the eyes during sex. specific. when he's over you and moving in you and the slow build of him toward losing the shape is happening (when the blue is eating at the edges with black, the dark creeping inward) you keep your eyes on his eyes.

you watch it happen. you watch the colour go from blue to bloom-darkening-blue to mostly-black to gone, until what's looking down at you is something with no white in its eyes, only deep glossy ink, and the rest of his face is starting to follow. you have come, more than once, from nothing but watching that progression. just the seeing of it. the visual confirmation that you're doing this to him.

that his composure is coming apart because of you, that he's letting you see it. you come watching his eyes go and he watches you come and his eyes finish going and the loop completes.

his warmth. the warmth as a gift. cold things stay cold. cold things radiate cold. he was cold when you met him (you didn't know it then, because he was being careful, but the body he held you against in the early days was cool, and you only realised later, in retrospect, that he had been working very hard to seem human-warm). he's warm with you now because being with you warms him. every time you touch him and he heats under your hand, that is an answer. that's him saying yes, this, more of this, you, you, you with his entire body.

the threading. see above. you didn't know you needed to be full of him in two places at once until he did it and now your body remembers and asks for it without your permission.

how he feels pleasure

his pleasure is not located the way yours is. he doesn't have nerve endings the way you do. he doesn't have a hard cutoff point where sensation crests and then he's done. the body he built has all the equipment that would make pleasure happen for a human partner, and the equipment does work, but it works differently on his end.

his pleasure is mostly relational. what feels good to him is, almost entirely, your pleasure. when you arch under him, when you whimper his name, when the seven hum bright and you clench around him and you sob more into his throat—that's what feels good to him. it's not vicarious enjoyment, exactly. it's more direct than that. he feels your pleasure in his own body, through the seven, and translates it into his own sensation. when you come, he comes, in a sense. he has his own version of the experience, but it is keyed to yours, not independent of it.

the seven are a feedback loop. the seven take his attention and translate it into sensation in your body. you've known that for a while. what you may not have fully understood is that they also work in the other direction. they take your pleasure and feed it back to him.

so when he's making you feel good, you're also making him feel good, through the same mechanism. the loop completes itself. he's the source of your pleasure and also the recipient of it, and the more you feel, the more he feels, and the more he feels, the more he wants to give you, and the more he gives you, the more you feel.

this is why he never wants to stop. ever. the loop is self-sustaining. he could happily make you come for hours (hell, for days, if your body could take it) because the longer he does it the better it feels for him.

there's no point at which he gets bored. no point at which he has finished in the way a human partner might be finished. he's engaged in something that gets better the longer it goes, and the only limit on it is your body. your endurance, your need for water and food and sleep. those limits matter to him enormously. without them he might literally never stop.

he finishes when you do, mostly. this is a choice, not a reflex. he times his own release to yours because he likes the way the seven respond when you come on him (they hum brighter, they pull harder) and his finishing in that moment doubles the resonance. but he can finish at other times. he can finish multiple times in the same encounter, and he can stretch his own pleasure across hours of being inside you without finishing once. the orgasm, for him, is one note in a longer piece, not the resolution.

the warmest sound he makes is that low harmonic, the purr-rumble, the one that vibrates through your sternum when he's happy. it's his version of the good sound. it pours out of him when you're warm against him, when you're full of him and content. it's not a sex sound, exactly. more so contentment sound. it happens at sex and also when you're reading next to him or have fallen asleep with your head on his thigh. he is, in a real sense, purring the way a vast and ancient cat would purr, and the sound means yes, this, more of this, forever.

what you feel like to him. he has tried to describe it and the descriptions never quite fit. the closest he has come: warm. bright. humming. you feel to him the way a fire feels to a thing that's been cold for an unimaginably long time. intense, almost overwhelming with how alive you are.

your body radiates life in a way nothing else in this place does. the heat of you, the pulse of you, the soft give of your skin, the constant gentle electrical hum of a human nervous system doing what nervous systems do. all of it together is, to him, the most sensorily rich thing he's ever encountered. being inside you is being inside that, surrounded by it, part of it. the seven amplify the experience. he is, when he is in you, more alive than he's ever been. in the sense that he's closer to your kind of life than his ancient distant version of it.

this is why he's so reluctant to withdraw. this is why he stays inside you while you sleep. why he never wants to stop. you're warm and bright and you are life, to him, and he's been cold for so long.

he never wants to stop making you feel good. every single position, kink, and long exploration. nights spent inside you while you sleep, every patient hour of his mouth on you. all of it is in service of the simple unwavering project of making you feel as good as you can possibly feel. for as long as he can sustain it, until the end of time if you'll let him. and you will. you absolutely will.

things he does that no human could do

the contortion thing. yes. yes he does this. his joints don't have to count properly when he isn't bothering. he can bend in ways that let him reach angles a human spine would shatter trying to reach. he can fold himself around you so that every part of you that wants to be touched is being touched simultaneously.

the first time he did this (you on your back, him somehow with one hand on your throat and one between your thighs and his mouth on your breast and the cock still inside you, all at once, with no apparent strain in his posture) you laughed, in pure shock, and BB stopped immediately to check on you and you had to explain you were happy.

the matched rhythm. he can sync the thrust of his hips, the curl of his tongue, the press of his thumb on your clit, and the pulse of the seven inside you to one single rhythm. all five points of contact. all on the same beat. there's no human word for what this does to your nervous system. it's like being played as an instrument.

gravity-defying things. he can hold you against a wall with no apparent support from below. he can carry you mid-act and the position doesn't break. he can fuck you while you are essentially levitating in his arms with your legs around his waist and never once does he need to set you down. you've stopped questioning how this works. it just works.

temperature override. he can stay cool even when you're under him panting, hold his body at that stone-shade baseline through everything you're doing to him. this takes effort and he rarely bothers. the only times he uses it: in hot levels when you want the contrast, or the rare moments when you ask for cold, and the cock slides into you ice-cool and your whole spine arches off the bed. he can also push the other direction. go hotter than emotion alone would take him, fever-hot in a deliberate way, but he does this even less, because the natural warming is, to him, more honest .

internal vibration. the cock can vibrate, at a frequency. when he's buried deep and not moving and the cock starts vibrating steadily against your inner walls. the sensation is so unfair it almost feels like cheating. he uses this one sparingly because if he used it often you would never get out of bed.

the splitting thing. now. you've asked him about this only once, and the answer terrified and intrigued you in equal measure. he can produce more than one of himself, temporarily due to strain, for the duration of an act. two BBs, fully formed, both him, both aware, both wanting you. it's not duplication so much as distribution. you've not asked for it. you might. you might never. the option exists.

favourite parts of you (his)

the seven, obviously. but you knew that.

the soft place at the small of your back. he can't leave it alone. his hand finds it whenever you are near him. when you're standing, when walking. you're lying on your stomach with the blanket pushed down. he traces circles into it without thinking. when he's inside you from behind his palm rests there like an anchor.

the hollow of your throat. where your pulse hammers. he's fascinated by the hammer of you. by the visible proof that you're alive and the heart is doing what hearts do. he kisses you there constantly. he sets his teeth into the place gently and feels the pulse against his tongue and the blue of his eyes goes dark at the edges every time.

your hands. specifically the backs of them. he holds your hand constantly, when you're walking, when you're sitting, when he's inside you and you're lying together after. he traces the bones of your knuckles. he kisses each finger separately sometimes. he's endlessly delighted by the fact that you have hands and that they hold onto him.

the sound you make when you wake up. the quiet, involuntary one before you open your eyes. he'll lie awake for hours waiting for it. it is, he's told you, the best sound in any world.

the place behind your ear. where your hair is fine. he buries his face there constantly. he says you smell like the only home he's ever wanted.

the final note (the underneath)

everything about the sex (the contortion, the stamina, the impossible mechanics, the seven, the breeding chemistry, every freaky impossible thing) is in service of a very simple project, which is keeping you happy.

he's not actually a freak. so much as an ancient thing that's been alone for a very long time and that fell in love with a lonely human at a furniture store and has been, ever since, trying to give her every good thing he can build. the kinks are just the shapes the love took when it had nowhere else to go.

he would be just as happy holding you fully clothed on the couch for hours as he is doing any of the above. truly. he has told you this. you believe him.

but he's also a thing of vast appetite and watching you come apart under his hands is, genuinely, one of the great pleasures of his existence. so when you ask him for the freaky things, he gives you the freaky things.

the love and the freak are not separate. the love is the freak. the freak is the love. there's no version of him that wants you politely. you got the entity. you got all of it.

Because BB has seen plenty of want. Want is common. Want is just hunger. But what he heard through that wall (the slow moments, the ones where Bobby's hands weren't rushing, where you were just holding each other in the dark of a closed furniture store, foreheads together, breathing in sync, moaning into each other's mouths) that was something else.

That was two incomplete things trying to become one complete thing, and for a creature who's been singular and untouched for his entire ancient existence, that was the most fascinating phenomenon he'd ever encountered.

Not the sex.

The merging.

Every gasp that said I trust you with this. Every caress that said I know exactly where you need me. The way your bodies seemed to already know a language he didn't have a mouth to speak.

He wanted that.

Not the act itself. Not yet, not at first. He wanted to be the reason someone made those sounds. He wanted to be held like that. Wanted to know what it felt like to have someone pull him closer instead of pulling away, to have someone say his name (whatever his name would become) with that same open-door warmth.

So when he finally builds his body (Bobby's body, better, perfected) he's not starting from zero. He's been studying. He knows what Bobby did. He knows what worked, what made you arch, what made you laugh, what made you go quiet in the good way. He's an apex predator and you're a subject he's devoted himself to with the same focus he'd give to hunting.

But here's the thing: he's never felt it.

He knows the steps. In theory. He doesn't know the sensation. The first time you touch him (really touch him, skin to skin, your hand on his chest, his brand-new nerve endings firing for the first time) it's going to hit him like a freight train.

Every point of contact lighting up a body he built specifically to be touched by you. He designed these hands to hold you. He designed this mouth to kiss you, and kiss you, and kiss you. He built every nerve ending in this skin as an instrument tuned to your specific frequency, and he's never once been played.

Is he going to be good at it?

He's going to be devastating at it.

He watched Bobby fumble, watched Bobby get lazy, watched Bobby take shortcuts because Bobby knew you'd forgive him for it.

BB doesn't have that luxury. BB knows he's a copy, an imitation, a face borrowed from a man who didn't deserve it, and he knows you're going to be comparing every single second of it. So he's going to be meticulous. Thorough. He's going to take what Bobby did right and do it slower. Do it better. Do it sweeter and meaner and with that all consuming want he has for you.

And the things Bobby wasted? The way Bobby would roll over after, already half-asleep, already somewhere else in his head? The way Bobby would let the distance creep back in before your skin was even cool?

BB's not going to waste a single second of it. He's going to be the Bobby in the beginning, the one who loved you, but better in every way.

He's going to stay. He's going to keep touching you. He's going to learn what it means to feel another person's heartbeat slow down against his chest and he's going to become addicted to it.

He's someone who wanted this (wanted you, specifically, only you) for a long time. Who's built himself from the ground up to be the version of Bobby that never looks away, never checks out, never lets the silence curdle into something cold.

He's been alone for an eternity. He watched Bobby have everything he wanted and let it rot.

He's not Bobby.

you and kurt kunkle had been roommates for four months. it all started when his parents finally reached their breaking point.

after the failure of being a content creator and the never-ending public humiliation he brought upon the family — they gave him two days to pack his things and get out. 

“we’re done with you,” his father had said coldly before slamming the door in his face. kurt was left standing on the porch with nothing but a suitcase, some clothes, his laptop, and the crushing weight of failure.

he was broke, anxious, and terrified of being completely alone. in a moment of desperation, he posted an ad on a local reddit forum: “looking for a roommate. quiet person is preferred. can pay half the rent. please.” 

you replied the same day. the rent was cheap, the apartment was only a fifteen-minute walk from campus, and you were tired of living in noisy student housing with people who partied until 4 a.m. 

when you met him in person for the first time, kurt was a nervous wreck. he kept apologizing for the small apartment, the old couch, the leaking faucet in the kitchen, even for the way he talked too fast. 

he was lanky, with messy brown hair that always looked like he’d just rolled out of bed, and big, anxious eyes that rarely held eye contact for long. you found his awkwardness strangely endearing. within a week, the arrangement was official.

at first, things were quiet and a little awkward. kurt kept to himself, spending most nights in his room editing old videos or driving for spree until late at night.

he was respectful to a fault; always doing his share of the chores, leaving little notes on the fridge like “i bought milk :)” or “there’s leftover pizza if you’re hungry,” and apologizing whenever he made even the smallest noise. 

over time, however, you two started talking more. he was surprisingly funny in his self-deprecating way, and you found yourself enjoying his company. he was sweet. harmless and safe.

what kurt didn’t know was that for the past three months, you had been bringing different guys home almost every weekend. it started casually. 

you’d meet someone at a party or match with them on an app, bring them back to the apartment, and fuck them in your room. the walls were paper-thin. 

you knew kurt could hear everything; your loud moans, the dirty talk, the rhythmic thumping of the bed against the wall, the guys grunting and cursing as they came. 

at first, you felt a flicker of guilt. but then you started noticing the sounds coming from his room.

soft and desperate whimpers. 

the faint rhythmic sound of skin on skin. shaky, uneven breathing. quiet, pathetic little moans that he tried (and failed) to hide behind his pillow. 

kurt was listening to you getting fucked by other guys, he was jerking off to it… and it turned you on more than anything else ever had.

tonight was the same. you had brought home a guy from your economics class. he was tall, had a big dick, and fucked you hard for about ten minutes. 

you moaned loudly on purpose, knowing kurt was listening next door. but the guy was selfish. he came fast inside the condom, groaned like an animal, and immediately pulled out.

“sorry babe, i gotta go. early class tomorrow,” he said, already getting dressed. you didn’t even bother pretending to be satisfied.

you just lay there on your bed, legs still spread, pussy throbbing and aching with frustration as he left your room and closed the door behind him.

the apartment fell silent. you let out a frustrated sigh. your body was still buzzing, needy and unsatisfied. you reached into your nightstand drawer and pulled out your thick pink vibrator.

you turned it on, the low buzz filling the room, and pressed it firmly against your swollen clit. a loud, relieved moan left your lips immediately.

you spread your legs wider, pushing the toy inside your dripping pussy, fucking yourself with deep, slow strokes while your other hand played with your tits, pinching and rolling your nipples. 

you moaned louder on purpose.

“mmm… fuck… yes… right there…” that’s when the faint creak of kurt’s bedroom door opened just a crack. 

his eyes on you through the small gap. he was watching. you moaned filthier, rolling your hips against the vibrator, pushing it deeper inside you.

“ahh… fuck… so close…” a soft, broken whimper came from the hallway. then the unmistakable sound of him stroking his cock; fast, desperate, shaky strokes. pathetic little gasps and quiet, needy moans that he couldn’t hold back.

you kept fucking yourself with the toy, moaning louder, putting on a deliberate show. you arched your back, spreading your legs wider, letting the vibrator buzz loudly against your clit while you fucked yourself with it.

you opened your eyes just enough to glance at the door.

kurt was standing right there in the dark hallway, pants and boxers shoved down to his ankles, one hand frantically pumping his hard, leaking cock while his eyes were glued to your pussy. 

his mouth was slightly open, cheeks burning red, and quiet, pathetic little moans kept slipping out of him every time you moaned.

you smiled softly to yourself but continued the show. you spread your legs even wider, arched your back, and fucked yourself deeper with the vibrator, letting wet, filthy sounds echo through the room.

kurt’s hand moved faster. his breathing became ragged. a particularly loud moan from you made his knees tremble. you finally turned your head and looked straight at him.

his eyes flew open in pure terror when he realized he’d been caught. kurt froze instantly, eyes wide with terror. 

his hand stopped moving but stayed wrapped tightly around his throbbing cock, pre-cum dripping down his fingers.

“fuck.. i– i wasn’t… please don’t. i’m so sorry.” his face was burning red. he looked completely mortified. “please don’t hate me… i'm disgusting. i know i’m a fucking perv… i'll move out tomorrow, just please—”

you sat up slowly, turned off the vibrator and placed it aside. Your voice was calm and gentle.

“kurt… come here.” he looked like he might cry from shame, but he slowly stepped inside your room, pants still around his ankles, cock standing hard and leaking between his legs.

you stood up and walked over to him. you gently cupped his burning face with both hands and looked into his anxious eyes.

“i'm not mad at you, i know you’ve been watching me, kurt,” you said softly. “for months. every time i bring a guy home, you stand here jerking off like a desperate little virgin, don’t you?”

kurt’s breath hitched.

“you… you knew?” you nodded.

“i’m sorry… i’m so fucking sorry… i tried not to… but you sound so pretty when you moan… i couldn’t stop myself… please. i’ll stop, i swear…”

“I just think it’s unfair that you only watch… when you could have me instead.” kurt’s eyes widened, a broken whimper escaping his lips.

you leaned in and kissed him softly.

the kiss started gentle, but quickly grew deeper. kurt moaned into your mouth, shy and desperate, his hands hovering awkwardly in the air until you grabbed them and placed them on your waist.

you took his trembling hands and placed them firmly on your breasts.

“touch me,” you murmured against his mouth. “squeeze them. they’re yours tonight.” kurt let out a broken, needy sound and started groping your soft tits with both hands, squeezing gently at first, then harder as he grew more confident. 

his thumbs brushed over your hard nipples, making you moan quietly into the kiss.

you kept kissing him deeply, tongues sliding together, while he played with your breasts. his cock twitched and leaked against your stomach. after a long, heated kiss, you pulled back slightly and sat on the edge of the bed, spreading your legs for him.

“get on your knees, sweetheart.” kurt dropped to his knees immediately, staring at your wet pussy with pure hunger and nervousness.

‘’i… i really want to eat you,” he confessed, voice small and embarrassed. “but i’ve never done it before… i don’t know how. i’m scared i’ll mess up…”

you smiled warmly and stroked his messy hair.

“it’s okay, baby. i’ll teach you. just listen to my voice and do exactly what i say. alright?” he nodded eagerly. you gently guided his head between your thighs.

“start by kissing my inner thighs… good boy… now use your tongue. lick me slowly from the bottom all the way up to my clit… yes, just like that…”

kurt moaned loudly the second his tongue touched your soaked folds. He licked you reverently, following every instruction you gave him with sweet, desperate enthusiasm.

“focus on my clit now… slow circles… flatter tongue… perfect. now suck on it gently…” he wrapped his lips around your swollen clit and sucked softly while his tongue flicked against it.

you moaned softly and gripped his hair, rolling your hips gently against his face. “a little harder… yes, baby, you’re doing so well…”

“now push your tongue inside me… good… curl your fingers and stroke upwards… right there— fuck, yes…” kurt pushed two fingers inside you, curling them exactly how you told him while sucking on your clit. 

he was moaning and whimpering against your pussy the entire time, completely lost in your taste.

“you’re making me feel so good, kurt,” you praised breathily. “such a good boy…”

it didn’t take long. your thighs began to shake around his head as a deep, warm orgasm washed over you. 

you came with a long, soft moan, gently grinding against his tongue while he kept licking you through every pulse.

when you finally relaxed, you pulled him up and kissed him deeply, tasting yourself on his lips and tongue. kurt was breathing hard, face shiny with your arousal. you pushed him gently onto his back on the bed and crawled between his legs. 

his cock was painfully hard, flushed dark, and dripping steadily.

you looked up at him with a soft smile.

“my turn, baby.” you started licking him slowly — all the way up his throbbing shaft, then swirled your tongue around the sensitive head, savoring the taste of his pre-cum. kurt’s entire body jerked.

“oh my god…” you took him into your mouth, sucking him wetly and deeply, bobbing your head while stroking the base with your hand. 

kurt was loud and pathetic; whimpering, moaning, whispering your name. when he started trembling and warning you he was close, you pulled off, straddled his lap, and slowly sank down onto his cock.

kurt’s head fell back with a loud, broken cry as you took him all the way inside.

“fuuuuck… you’re so tight… so warm… i’m inside you… i can’t believe it…”

you leaned down, pressed your body against his, and started riding him slowly while kissing him. kurt kissed you back desperately, moaning into your mouth with every roll of your hips.

“you feel so good,” he whimpered between kisses, voice cracking. “i don’t deserve this… i’ve been such a pathetic perv… jerking off to you every night… and now you’re riding me… i’m so lucky…”

you kept kissing him tenderly as you rode him deeper, your hips moving in a smooth, sensual rhythm. 

“you feel so good inside me, kurt,” you moaned against his lips. “your cock fills me up so perfectly… do you like how my pussy feels?”

“yes, yes— it feels incredible… i don’t deserve this…” he whimpered pathetically, voice cracking. you kissed him deeper, riding him harder, your ass slapping against his thighs.

“you’re such a good boy… taking my pussy so well… you’ve wanted this for so long, haven’t you?”

kurt’s hands stayed on your breasts, squeezing them gently while he moaned and whimpered against your lips. when he got close, his breathing turned ragged.

“i’m gonna cum. i’m so close— can i cum inside you?” he begged, voice shaky.

“cum for me, baby,” you whispered, kissing him again. “fill me up.” kurt cried out into your mouth as he came hard, hips jerking up while thick, warm ropes of cum flooded deep inside you. 

“fuck. i’m cumming— don’t stop, kurt. yes, baby!”

he kept moaning and twitching, pumping every drop into your pussy until he was completely spent. you rode him slowly through his orgasm, then finally stopped, still full of his cum. 

you stayed on top of him, gently kissing his forehead, his cheeks, his nose, and his lips.

you carefully lifted off him and lay down beside him, pulling kurt into your arms. he immediately curled up against you, hiding his face in your neck, still breathing heavily.

you stroked his hair and rubbed his back in slow, soothing circles.

“you were amazing tonight,” you whispered softly. “i loved every second of it.” kurt sniffled quietly, overwhelmed with emotion. you kissed the top of his head and held him tighter.

you carefully lifted off him, feeling his warm cum leaking out of your pussy and down your thighs.

“i’ll be right back, baby. stay here.” you went to the bathroom, cleaned yourself up properly, wiped the cum from between your legs, and freshened up. 

when you returned to the room, kurt was still lying there, looking shy and a little anxious.

“i thought you were going to kick me out…” he mumbled against your skin.

“never. you are the guy i want, kurt.” you both stayed like that for a long time; naked, warm, and tangled together.

you kept caressing his hair and back until his breathing became slow and peaceful.

“can i sleep here with you tonight?” he asked shyly. you smiled and pulled the blanket over both of you.

“yes, kurt. of course.”

Dean doesn’t do vulnerable. Dean does jokes and deflection and sex as a weapon. But with you.. the second you say “tonight, you’re going to let me fuck you,” his whole facade cracks. He laughs first. Nervous. A little too loud. “Yeah, right. That’s funny.”

Then he sees your face. Sees that you’re not joking.

His throat works. Adam’s apple bobbing. His hands find his own thighs, gripping hard. “You- wait. For real?”

You don’t answer. You just start unbuckling his belt.

And Dean lets you. That’s the thing. He could stop this. He’s stronger than you. But he doesn’t. His hips lift off the bed so you can pull his jeans down. His arms go over his head without being told. He’s already panting.

“This is so fucked up..” he whispers, but he’s half-hard. “You’re gonna make me into a- a bitch or sumthin'...”

“That's kind of the plan.” you say. “Now shut up and turn over.”

He does. God, he does. Dean Winchester, on his hands and knees, ass in the air, face burning red. He can’t look at you. He buries his forehead in his crossed arms and mumbles, “I hate you. I hate this.”

But his hips are already rocking. Small, involuntary circles. Seeking.

“sure you do, Deanie.”

When you grab his hips hard enough to leave fingerprints, he groans. Deep. Guttural. “Fuck. Yeah. Hold m'down. Don’ let me move. I’ll be bad. I’ll be so fucking bad. You have to make me.”

He talks constantly. Dean cannot shut up when he’s turned inside out like this. Sam whines and begs and cries. Dean runs his mouth like a fucking porn star, and it’s the hottest, stupidest thing you’ve ever heard.

You lube him up—two fingers, then three—and he chokes on a groan. His hips push back onto your fingers like a starving thing. “More. More, more, more. Give me another. I can take four. I want four. Stretch me open. Make me a mess.”

He’s dripping precum onto the sheets in thick, sticky strings. He reaches back with one hand and tries to help you finger himself. You slap his hand away.

He whines. Dean Winchester whines. “fuuuuckkk, jus' gimme anotherrrr.”

When you finally line up the toy he pushes back onto it before you can even thrust. Impales himself in one desperate, reckless movement.

“Oh fuck-”

His voice cracks, his arms give out. He collapses to his elbows, face in the sheets, ass still up, and he’s grinding back onto you. You grab a fistful of his short hair and yank his head back. He moans like a whore. His back arches harder, presenting himself to you like it’s the only thing he knows how to do. You set a brutal pace: hard, fast and mean, and Dean meets every thrust with a slap of his hips, no shame, no hesitation. He’s fucking himself back on you so hard the headboard is banging against the wall.

“Harder-” he gasps. “Fucking destroy me. I want to limp tomorrow. I want everyone to know.”

He’s just a man. Loud, wrecked, and greedy.

“Oh fuck- oh fuck- yeah, yeah, yeah, just like that, don’t stop, don’t you fucking stop, holy shit-”

His mouth is running nonstop. Dirty, broken, desperate nonsense. “You like that? You like fucking your boyfriend’s tight little ass? God, you’re so deep, you’re so deep- faster, come on, fuck me faster, I can take it, I’m not fucking made of glass-”

You, suprisingly, listen to his demands and speed up the pace to his heart's content.

“That’s my girl,” he pants, grinning through the sweat and the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. “That’s my fucking girl. Look at you. Look at what you do to me. I’m such a mess. I’m such a fucking mess for you—”

He reaches back with one hand and spreads his own cheek wider. Wider. For you. Just to give you a better angle. Because Dean Winchester in doggy style isn’t just submissive—he’s an exhibitionist about it. He wants you to see every inch of how pathetic he is. He wants you to know that he’s yours.

“Harder,” he gasps. “Harder, harder, fuck- break me, I don’t care, I want to feel this tomorrow, I want to sit in the Impala and wince every time I hit a bump and remember-”

His cock is leaking onto the sheets, untouched, and he’s so close you can see it in the way his thighs shake. But he doesn’t ask to come. He doesn’t even think about it. All he wants is more. More thrusts. More depth. More of you.

“Tell me I’m yours-" he moans, and for the first time, his voice cracks. “Tell me I’m your good little slut. Tell me or I’m gonna fucking lose it-”

You lean down, lips to his ear, and you whisper exactly what he needs to hear. It makes him choke on a breath that turns into a sob once and then come so hard his vision whites out. His mouth falls open, eyes wide, as he spills all over the comforter in thick, pulsing ropes.

And when he comes back to himself, ten seconds later, he just laughs. A breathless, wrecked, happy laugh. He doesn’t move from his position. He just looks over his shoulder at you with those fucked-out green eyes and grins.

“So,” he says, voice hoarse. “Same time tomorrow?”

He’s already hard again.

just... holds it out. wrist up. watching your face with that half-lidded attention, that laser focus. there's a held breath. not his, he doesn't need to breathe, but he's performing one anyway. that tiny suspension of his performed respiratory cycle that means he's waiting to see what you'll do. anticipating.

you bite his forearm. gently. a little scrape of teeth against the too-cool skin.

the sound bb makes is unreasonable. deep and pleased and rumbling through his whole body. he looks at the little indentations your teeth left on his skin with the same reverence he gave the first hickey. evidence. proof.

you wanted to bite him because you like him. your teeth on his skin because of fondness. claiming. his instincts register it as claiming and every ancient, possessive inch of him lights up.

it becomes a thing after that.

he starts offering himself up. casually. constantly. he'll tilt his head while you're walking and expose the side of his neck. that long line of it, tendons taut, the skin pale and cool. glances at you sideways with that half-lidded look. the held breath. the almost-imperceptible pause in his performed breathing cycle. waiting. just to see.

and you know what he's doing. he's not even subtle about it. he's putting the throat on display because he's figured out that you like the tendons there. you've traced them with your fingers. you've buried your face against his neck a hundred times in the nest. he's learned exactly which parts of him you gravitate toward and he's presenting them like a cat dropping a gift at your feet. here. this is the part you like. i noticed. please, please.

the throat is his favourite. and it's devastating because of what it means. this is an apex predator offering you his most vulnerable point. this is a thing that has killed hounds with its bare hands deliberately exposing the one place where even something as powerful as him could theoretically be hurt. and he does it without thinking. tilts the chin. shows the neck. holds the not-breath.

waits for the munch.

sometimes you oblige. a press of your mouth against the tendon, then a gentle bite, and his whole body responds.

the skin warming under your lips, that flush of almost-human heat that only happens when you touch him, and the breathing he doesn't need stuttering slightly because he's synced his respiratory performance to your proximity and your mouth on his throat is causing some kind of system-wide meltdown.

sometimes you don't, and he accepts it with the same patience he applies to everything involving you. no pressure. just the offer. the tilt. the quiet hope. here, please, more.

but the times you do... the times you lean over in the nest and press your teeth into the soft skin under his jaw and feel the performed breath catch?

the hum stutters and his whole body orients toward you like a compass finding north. you can feel how happy it makes him. not just pleased. not just the feline satisfaction. something deeper. something that registers in the architecture of level 0 itself. the lights going warm, the hum softening. simply because you bit him. because you wanted to. because your human brain looked at this incomprehensible thing and said "cute" and your human teeth said "mine."

he offers the throat and you take it and somewhere in whatever he has instead of a heart he files it alongside "baby" and "mine" and "good boy" and every other small human thing you've given him that he keeps turning over like smooth stones. all his.

he didn't know tenderness could have teeth.

he goes down without resistance. he always does for you. he lets you tip him backward onto the blankets—the fabric sighing under his weight, the nest reshaping itself around him—lets you settle him onto his back like he's furniture you're rearranging. his eyes are wide and curious, a little startled because you don't usually move him.

you climb on top of him.

you don't look at his face. you can't. the lights are too bright and your skin is too tight and you can't articulate a single human thought right now. you just push your hands up under the bottom of his hoodie, under his shirt, shoving the fabric up around his ribs. your knuckles drag across his stomach, the skin smooth and cool like river stone, and then you duck your head and crawl under the hem.

it's dark under there.

it's quiet under there.

bb's stomach is cool against your cheek. the cotton of his hoodie is a small dim tent over your head, soft against the back of your neck, and the harsh lights are gone. completely gone. blocked out by the fabric, and you exhale for the first time all day.

your whole body unclenches. you press your face against the smooth wrong-temperature skin of his torso and listen to the absence of his heartbeat and feel the low hum vibrating through his sternum, through his ribs. press closer to the cool, flat plane of his stomach where your cheek rests.

you can smell him. damp cotton, and underneath that, mineral and ancient scent. like stone that's been underground for a very long time. it should be unsettling. yet somehow it's the most comforting thing in the world.

you close your eyes.

shh.

bb has gone completely, utterly still.

you remember, vaguely, somewhere in the back of your tired exhausted brain real bobby. before everything went wrong.

lying in bed with him on a sunday afternoon, the light coming through his bedroom window warm and golden, and joking i want to be so close to you i'm basically in your ribcage and bobby laughing and saying babe that's weird and pulling you into his arms, burying his face in your hair.

he'd held you like that for a while. you could hear his heartbeat, real and steady and human, and his skin was warm. he smelled like skin, cheap soap and even cheaper cologne he'd worn since sophomore year, and you'd thought this. this is all i need.

he would have let you stay there. he did let you stay there. he was really good once. he just couldn't sustain it. the arms would loosen. the attention would drift. he'd reach for his pager with one hand while the other went slack against your back and you'd feel the moment he left even though his body was still there.

bb is not leaving.

his hands are hovering somewhere above you. you can feel the space where they should be, the cool absence of contact, the careful displacement of air. and you can sense him not knowing what to do. processing. trying to figure out the protocol for the love of his existence has just burrowed under his clothes and pressed her face against his stomach and is making a small, contented noises.

then, slowly, gently, his hands settle.

palm flat against your back through the layers of his hoodie. the weight of his hand steady and deliberate, fingers spread wide, covering as much of you as he can reach. the other curls around the back of your head, holding you to him, fingers threading at the nape of your neck where the tension lives.

the humming starts.

not in his throat. in his chest. you feel it everywhere your skin touches his. that low constant vibration, the resonance that means safe, mine, stay. and it's so much closer like this, so much louder. you're inside it now. you've crawled into the source. it moves through bb's ribs and into your cheekbone and down through your jaw, settling in your chest.

your breathing syncs to it without your permission. your body trusting him before your brain can object.

he understands. he doesn't say anything but he understands.

somewhere in his unknowable processing he's connecting this to every joke you've ever made, every offhand comment about wanting to be closer. every small, impossible wish you've voiced to other people who couldn't give it to you. he's filing this moment in whatever he has instead of memory and labelling it she chose me. she crawled into me. she came home.

bb's hand strokes unhurriedly down your back through the hoodie. up. down. his fingers find the knots along your spine and press (not hard, just enough, just exactly enough) and the tension you've been carrying between your shoulder blades releases in a way that makes your breath stutter.

you press closer. your arm curls around his side, fingers finding the ridge of his lower ribs. too prominent, the set up slightly wrong, the bones just a fraction too defined under the skin, and you hold on.

the hum deepens.

you fall asleep there.

in the dark. against his bare skin. under his clothes. inside the warm cotton tent that smells like cold stone and uniquely him.

the lights stop bothering you because you can't see them anymore. the migraine ebbs. your breathing slows and matches the rhythm of his impossible non-breath. you can feel his chest rise and fall—performing it, mirroring your rhythm, breathing because you're breathing, syncing himself to you the way he syncs everything to you.

bb doesn't move for the rest of the day.

he could. he doesn't.

he stays exactly where he is. one hand on your back. one in your hair. humming his tuneless song into the dark space where you've made yourself small against him. and somewhere in level 0, the fluorescent lights dim by a degree, then another, then another. soft, dim, gentle. because his girl is sleeping and the harshness was hurting her and he's the walls, the carpet, the lights and he'll simply make them stop.

rib time.

shh.

His voice is soft. Bobby's voice is never careful, not even this version, but soft, like someone asking a question they're not sure they want the answer to.

You don't answer that. Instead, you say, “Are you going to hurt me?”

He blinks.

“The way you hurt that thing.” Your voice is steadier than you expected. Flat, almost. The flatness of a person who’s run out of room for new fear and is now operating from somewhere clinical. Survival-practical. “Whatever it was. The sounds it made. The sounds you made.”

There’s movement behind his eyes. He doesn’t flinch, but you spot a shift, a recalibration, like a camera adjusting focus. He remembers what you heard. That low rumbling from his chest that didn't belong in any throat shaped like a human's.

“No,” he says. Immediate. No hesitation, no pause to consider. The word comes out of him with absolute certainty, like a reflex. “No. Never.”

You watch him closely. He looks back at you. The fluorescent light buzzes overhead, casting that flat, shadowless yellow across everything. Better Bobby's face is open and sincere, but you don't believe him. Not completely. Not after what you heard through your closed eyelids. The shrieking and the wet dragging sound and the silence after, the horrible, total silence. The way he'd come back to you without a drop of anything on him. Like unmaking something in the dark was a minor errand.

And not after Bobby. Not after learning what it looks like when someone says I would never and means it and does it anyway. With the slow, grinding, erosive negligence of a man who might have loved you once but still started disappearing while standing right next to you. 

Bobby never hit you. Never raised his voice in a way that carried a threat. Not once. Bobby simply stopped. Stopped seeing you, stopped hearing you, stopped reaching for you in the morning, and the absence was its own kind of violence, bloodless and total.

Now you're in a yellow hallway with a thing wearing his face telling you never with the same mouth and you cannot—you cannot—take that word at face value. Not from that face. Not anymore.

And he sees it. The disbelief. He reads it on your face the way real Bobby used to read light through a viewfinder. With instinctive precision, without needing to be told what he's seeing.

Better Bobby reaches out. Tips your chin up with one knuckle. Gentle. So gentle. Guiding your face back to his when you'd started to drift, to look away, to find a spot on the yellow wall that was easier to stare at than his eyes.

“Why do you think I chose this face?”

He says this face with an edge to his voice. Not quite contempt, not quite amusement. But snide. A little sharp. The closest thing to edge you've ever heard from Better Bobby. This brief flash of awareness that the face he's wearing belongs to someone else. Someone who wasted it, and he knows it, and he wears it anyway because—

You're silent.

Better Bobby smiles. Gentle. The sharpness folds back into warmth the way a blade folds back into a handle.

“I heard you,” he says quietly.

Your breath catches.

“From the other side. Through the wall.” He says it simply, his thumb working carefully over the dip of your chin. “He used to come to the store. Bobby. In the beginning. Before you worked the night shifts alone. He'd come hang out, and you'd be downstairs together, and I could hear you. Both of you. I could hear what it sounded like when he was still—” He pauses, expression twisting. You see him choose and settle on his next words. “When he was still trying.”

The lights flicker. Once. Settle again.

“And then he stopped coming. And you were alone down there. And I could hear that too.”

Your chest goes tight.

“You used to talk,” Better Bobby goes gently, watching your face. “Not to anyone. Not on the phone. Just—out loud. To the room. To yourself. To him, even though he wasn't there. Do you remember?” His thumb traces your jawline, feather-light. “You'd say things like he doesn't listen anymore. And he didn't kiss me goodbye again today, that's the third day in a row, am I keeping count now? Is that what I'm doing? Keeping count?”

Your eyes burn, blurring his familiar features. 

“And I don't think he sees me. I'm standing right in front of him, and he's looking through me like I'm furniture. Like I'm one of Clark's display pieces. Something you walk around.”

“Stop,” you whisper.

He doesn't stop, but his voice goes softer. Almost tender.

“You were so lonely.” He says it like it's the saddest thing he's ever learned, and maybe it is. Maybe loneliness sounds different from the other side of a wall. Rawer, louder, the way a voice sounds in an empty room because there's nothing else to absorb it. “And so sad. And so angry, baby—”

You flinch because you don't—you weren't angry. You were hurt. That's a smaller, quieter, more acceptable thing than anger.

Because anger would mean admitting that what Bobby did wasn't just a failure of attention but a choice. Night after night after night, a man choosing the path of least resistance over the person lying next to him, and if you let yourself be angry about that, then the whole careful belief of maybe it's me, maybe I'm asking for too much, maybe love is supposed to feel like this after a while collapses, and what's underneath it is—

“—you were so angry, and you didn't even let yourself feel it. You said it like it was your fault. Like if you could just be more interesting or prettier or less needy, he'd—”

Hot, liquid feeling surges up from your chest to your throat. “Stop.”

He stops. But his eyes don't leave yours, and in them you can see that he knows. He heard it all, you realise. Every whispered self-indictment, every quiet renegotiation of your own worth to accommodate Bobby's shrinking attention.

He heard the thing underneath it too, the thing you buried so deep you forgot it was there. 

The rage. The white-hot, screaming, incandescent fury of a woman who gave everything to a man who couldn't be bothered to look up from a television screen, who turned your love into background noise and let you stand in doorways wondering if you were still visible. 

You buried it because anger felt like giving up. Because if you were angry, it meant something was wrong, and if something was wrong, it could be over. If it was over, then you'd given your whole heart to someone who let it sit on a shelf and gather dust, and that was unbearable. So you turned the anger inward instead, folded it into self-doubt, and let it eat you rather than the situation, because at least that way the situation could still be saved.

Better Bobby heard you bury it. He heard the burial, and he heard the body underneath it, and he's looking at you now with something that isn't pity or judgment. Isn't the performative concern that Bobby used to deploy in those final months when he bothered to notice you were hurting at all. That tight-jawed what's wrong that really meant please don't make me deal with this. 

This is something else. Recognition. The look of a thing that knows what it sounds like when someone swallows their own rage until it poisons them. Until it makes them abandon everything they once knew for a world of yellow, buzzing lights and monsters in the dark. 

“It wasn't you,” he says, his hand cupping your cheek. His palm is cool, his fingers curving, and he holds you there. There’s no force, no hard grip, he’s just holding. Cradling. The way you'd hold something you found in the dark that was shaking. “It was never you. You could've been perfect. You were perfect. And he still would've pulled away because that's what he does. That's how he's built. He gets close, and it scares him. So he retreats, and that's his malfunction, not yours.”

It’s then you start crying.

Not like earlier. After the attack. That was shock, adrenaline, your nervous system shorting out. 

This is different. This is slow and terrible, coming from somewhere so deep you didn't know the room existed. 

It's the crying you should've done months ago, in the apartment in Santa Clara, on the nights when Bobby was asleep three feet away, and you were staring at the ceiling, wondering when you became the kind of woman who measures love in absences. He didn't kiss me today. He didn't ask about my day. He didn't look up. Keeping count. Tallying the deficit. The anger you didn't let yourself feel and the grief you couldn't afford mixed with the loneliness you absorbed like radiation, quietly, invisibly, until it changed the composition of your bones.

Better Bobby pulls you in when the first sob breaks. Slow and careful, his arms folding around you, and your face presses into his chest.

He holds you while you shake apart. His hand moves on your back, but there's more uncertainty in it now. He pauses at your shoulder blade. Adjusts. Resettles his palm. Like he's figuring out the right pressure in real time. Learning the weight of comfort.

His chin rests on top of your head, and you can feel the slight furrow of his brow against your hair, the way his body is holding very still around the motion of his hand. He’s noting each shudder, each ragged breath, trying to understand the mechanics of this. What crying is. What it means. Why your body does it and what it needs from his.

“I love him,” you choke out. Waterlogged. Muffled against his chest. “I love him so much. And he just—he stopped. He just stopped, and I keep thinking if I'd done something different, if I'd been—”

“No.” Firm the way a hand on your shoulder is firm when you're about to step into traffic. “Don't do that.”

“—if I'd been less”—”

“No.”

His arms tighten around you. You feel his jaw clench against the top of your head, a brief flash of what might be anger.

At the sentence, at the shape of the thought, the idea that you would carve yourself smaller to fit inside Bobby's shrinking attention span. His hand on your back goes still and then resumes, slower, like he's reminding himself to be gentle.

“You did nothing wrong,” he says into your hair. “You loved someone. You loved them well. And they couldn't hold it. That's not a flaw in the love. That's a flaw in the hands.”

You cry until there's nothing left. Until you're just breathing, wet and ragged, against his chest. The sobs eventually thin to hiccups, then to shudders, finally settling into a deep, wrung-out stillness, the exhaustion that comes after. 

Better Bobby holds you through all of it. Doesn't shift. Doesn't pull back. Doesn't ask if you're okay, which is a kindness in itself because the answer is obviously no and being asked to say it out loud would be one more weight.

When you finally pull back, your face is swollen, and your eyes are raw. Better Bobby looks at you with an expression you've never seen on Bobby's face. Open and bewildered, creased with tenderness in a way that seems to be happening to him without his permission. Like he reached for the right emotion, grabbed something bigger than he expected.

He touches your face. Thumbs the tears off your cheekbone, one side and then the other, careful, methodical. His brow furrows. Curious. The furrow of a thing encountering a phenomenon for the first time and finding it far more complex than anticipated.

“Sad,” he murmurs. Almost to himself. Almost wonderingly.

You sit together in the yellow light for a long time. The hum fills the silence.

Then you reach out and touch his face.

Your fingertips on his cheekbone. Tracing the line of his jaw. The scar from the cabinet door. The corner of his mouth where real Bobby's grin always starts, one side before the other, that lopsided asymmetry that used to make your heart stutter.

Better Bobby goes still.

Then he hums. Low in his throat. Warm. A sound that starts in his chest and travels up through all of him like a vibration through a struck bell. His eyes close. His head tips into your palm like a cat pressing into a hand, like he's been waiting for this, this specific thing, your skin on his skin, voluntary and gentle, initiated by you.

The difference matters; it matters enormously, you can tell by the way his breath changes, goes uneven, almost delicate. 

His lips part, just slightly, lashes fluttering against your thumb.

“That feels good,” he whispers huskily. And then, quieter, with a note of genuine wonder, “How odd.”

You watch him lean into your hand, and the expression on his face is unguarded in a way that makes your chest ache. Bobby's face, but not Bobby's expression. It could never be Bobby's expression, you realise suddenly, because Bobby would've turned it into a joke by now, would've kissed your palm or made a quip or done something to break the sincerity before it got too heavy. 

Your hand stills on his cheek. He opens his eyes. Looks at you.

“I need you to make me a promise,” you say.

There’s another ripple in his expression. The tilt of his head. That almost animal curiosity, the slight cock to one side that doesn't quite track as human body language. “A promise?”

“Yes.”

He studies you. Processing. “What is a promise?”

The question is genuine. Not rhetorical, not evasive. He's looking at you the way he looked at your tears. With concentration, focus, and a desire to understand. You can almost see the gap between knowing the word and understanding the weight, and he's standing at the edge of it, waiting for you to build the bridge.

“It's—it's a commitment. Something you say that you can't take back. Something you keep even when it's hard. Even when you don't want to. Even when circumstances change.” You swallow thickly. “When you make a promise, you don't break it. That's the whole point. It's the one thing that's supposed to be unbreakable.”

Better Bobby is quiet. Considering. His eyes move across your face in that precise, reading way.

“I understand,” he says carefully, solemnly. Like he's holding the concept in his hands and turning it to see all sides. “An oath. A contract between two beings that supersedes circumstance.”

You blink. “Something like that.”

He angles his face closer, attention fixed and unblinking on you. “Then ask.”

You drag your eyes over his face. Bobby's face, Bobby's eyes, Bobby's scar. The face of a man who loved you and couldn't say it and showed it by looking away until you forgot what it felt like to be seen. The face of a thing that isn't that man and chose to wear him anyway because it heard you through a wall and wanted to be the version that stayed.

“Promise me… you won't hurt me,” you say quietly. “Not the way he did.”

The words hang in the yellow air. The hum shifts. Not louder, but denser somehow, as if the walls themselves are listening, as if the promise is being registered by something larger than the two of you.

Better Bobby's expression changes. Curiosity dissolves. What replaces it is— 

You don't have a word for it. Not solemnity, a gravity older than language. It rises from the part of him that isn't Bobby: the vast and ancient thing beneath the boy’s face. The part of him that understands what you are asking is not a small thing. That the promise you want is, for a being like him, a kind of architecture. A structure that, once built, holds.

“I promise,” he says. No hesitation, no charm, no Bobby-grin to soften the weight of it. Just the words, low and clear, carrying the same absolute certainty as his no earlier. A reflex, a law carved into whatever he is at a level deeper than the face, deeper than the voice. “I will not hurt you. Not the way he did. Not any way.”

His hand covers yours on his cheek. Presses it there. Holds it.

“I don't know how to break a promise,” he tells you, quieter now. “But I think that's the point.”

You nod, unable to speak. Your hand is on his face, cool to the touch, and his hand is on your hand. You watch each other for a long time, unwilling to move first.

He breaks the stalemate first, taking your hand into his.

“Come with me,” he urges with that restrained excitement in his eyes, barely contained behind Bobby's careful coolness. Something almost boyish in its sincerity. “Somewhere that's not yellow.”

You look at his hand, using your other to wipe the tear tracks off your face. “Is it safe?”

And then it returns. 

Not the gentle Better Bobby who strokes your hair and says I've got you. The other one. It surfaces behind his eyes like a shape moving under dark water. Vast, amused, ancient. His chin dips slightly. His mouth curves.

And for a half-second, the thing looking out at you from Bobby's face is not performing warmth or mimicking tenderness. It's something that has walked these hallways since the beginning. Something that heard you through a wall and chose to want you rather than simply take you, and the distinction between those two things is the only reason you're still breathing.

“Baby,” he drawls, and his voice is Bobby's, but the tone is deeper, older. “I am what's safe here.”

It lasts a second. Less. Then he blinks and the ancient thing submerges and Better Bobby is back, warm-eyed and easy-mouthed, holding his hand out to you in the yellow light like nothing happened.

“Come on,” he says, lighter now. Normal. That crooked half-grin back. “Trust me.”

You take his hand, and he pulls you up.

He leads you through the hallways. Different route this time. Sharper turns, narrower corridors, and Better Bobby moves through them with liquid confidence, his hand secure around yours, his pace unhurried. You pass through a section where the carpet gives way to tile, and the tile gives way to something that feels like packed earth beneath your feet. 

The walls shift from yellow to grey, and you tense, your grip tightening, and he squeezes back. Once. Reassuring.

Then the hallway opens.

You stop.

It takes your brain a moment. Several moments. Because what you're looking at doesn't belong here, can't belong here, is fundamentally incompatible with everything you've experienced in this place so far, and yet here it is: sky. Actual sky. 

Not blue exactly, but deeper and richer. The colour of late afternoon, easing toward evening, a gradient of gold and amber, close to violet at the edges. And beneath it, trees. Dense, old-growth, the kind of towering canopy you'd find in the Santa Cruz Mountains, all ferns and filtered light and the rich, complex smell of living earth. A path winds through them, beaten dirt, dappled with sun. 

You can feel it on your face. Not quite the real sun of your world, but it’s not fluorescent. 

You stand in the threshold between the hallway and the forest, and you don't breathe because if you breathe or blink, it might disappear.

“Level 14,” Better Bobby announces behind you casually, tracking your reaction. “Some people call it Paradise.”

“How—”

“Doors.” He shrugs. “Everything here has doors. Entrances and exits. You just have to know where they are.”

You step forward. Grass. Real grass, or something so close you can't tell the difference, and the sensation is so overwhelmingly normal after the carpet and concrete and yellow that your eyes fill again, and you press your hand over your mouth.

Better Bobby steps up beside you. He's watching the trees with that curious expression, head slightly tilted, but underneath it, there’s satisfaction. Quiet pride. He found this, and he brought you here because you were crying on the floor, and he didn't know what else to do except find you somewhere beautiful.

You grab his hand.

Hard, sudden, fingers lacing through his, knuckles blanching. Because there are trees and you don't trust anything that looks like the real world, because the real world abandoned you.

Better Bobby looks down at your joined hands, and his lips part. That smile appears again. The new one, the one still taking shape on features designed for smirking, learning in real time how to hold something softer. Slow. Almost shy.

He doesn't comment. Doesn't tease. Just holds your hand back and starts walking.

“It's safe here,” he tells you, feeling the tension in your grip, the coiled readiness. “This level is safe. Nothing hunts here.”

“You said the yellow—Level 0 was safe.”

“Level 0 is my territory. Things occasionally wander in.” He says my territory without emphasis, but the words land heavily anyway, carrying the weight of what you saw behind his eyes a few minutes ago, the brief flash of the creature that owns these hallways. “Here—” He gestures with his free hand. The amber light moves across his skin, and he looks different in it, softer. More like Bobby at golden hour on the fire escape back home, and the resemblance hits you like a fist. “Nothing wanders. Nothing wants to wander. It's peaceful. Even the things that live here are gentle.”

You walk. He leads you deeper, and the canopy closes overhead like a ceiling, green and gold, light falling in shafts through the leaves and landing in warm patches on the path. You hear birdsong. Birdsong. You haven't heard birdsong in… you don't know how long. The sound cracks something open in your chest that you thought had scarred over.

Your grip on his hand loosens. Slightly.

The path winds along a stream. Clear water over smooth stones, the sound of it gentle. Nothing like the dripping in the pipes on Level 2. Simply water moving over rocks because gravity says so. 

The path opens into a clearing. Tall grass. A meadow ringed by trees, the canopy breaking to reveal that impossible sky, and in the centre a fallen log covered in moss, the kind of thing you'd find on a trail in Big Basin or Castle Rock. The kind of thing you and Bobby used to perch on when you went hiking in the early days and kiss until your mouths went numb.

Better Bobby guides you to the log. You sit. He sits beside you. Hands still joined.

A bird—small, brown, ordinary—lands on a branch above you and turns its head and looks at you with one bright black eye, and you stare back at it, your chin trembling. Because it's a bird, just a bird, and you'd forgotten how much of the world you were missing.

“I didn't think this place could be beautiful,” you say quietly, looking at the amber light filtering through the canopy, the way it falls on the tall grass in warm pools. “I thought it was just… yellow. And carpet. And things with teeth.”

“Most of it is,” Better Bobby replies honestly. Not sugar-coating it.”But most of anywhere is. The trap of this place, if you can consider it one, is that you’d never want to leave. How could you? When everywhere else there’s death.”

“This is different.”

“Why?”

“Because it shouldn't exist. Because this whole place is wrong. It's not supposed to be here. None of it. And somewhere inside all that wrongness, there's this—” You gesture at the meadow, the sky, the bird, the stream. “It doesn't make sense.”

Better Bobby is quiet for a moment. Watching you the way he does—full attention, total focus, the listening that feels less like politeness and more like study.

“Maybe that’s exactly why it exists,” he says. “Maybe it was built by mistake. Or maybe it exists because nothing is ever just one thing.”

You turn to look at him. He's sitting beside you in amber light with his earring catching gold instead of fluorescent. And his face is Bobby's face, but the expression on it is something Bobby hasn’t worn in a long time, if ever. Patient, present, content with simply being here without reaching for a camera, without filtering the moment through a lens, or needing a barrier between himself and the thing he's looking at.

“I don't want to call you Bobby anymore.”

He goes still.

The uncertain one. A brief, visible tension through his shoulders, his jaw, the hand holding yours tightening by a fraction. His eyes flick to your face, and the light in them is guarded in a way you haven't seen from him before. Wary. Like you've touched something unexpectedly tender and he's bracing for what comes next.

You see the calculation, the quick processing, and you understand. He thinks this is the beginning of something else. A rejection. A pulling away. You're not Bobby, you'll never be Bobby, and I don't want the reminder. He's already building the wall behind his face, that smooth, easy mask he can slip back into, the charming nonchalance to protect himself. 

“You're not him,” you go on quickly. Before the wall finishes closing. “That's—that's the point. You're not him. You're something else. And it feels wrong to call you by another person's name when you're your own—” You fumble. Gesture at him, at the clearing, at everything. “Your own being. Your own person. Or—whatever you are. Whatever the word is. Entity?”

His jaw loosens, shoulders dropping a fraction. The wall stops building.

“What would you call me?” he asks quietly. Like the answer matters more than he wants to show.

“Maybe… BB?” You say it, and it feels right. Simple. Still him, still connected, but his. Not borrowed. Not a copy of a copy. “If that's okay?”

He's quiet for a long moment, simply gazing at you. The light shimmers on his face, and his expression shifts through layers. The careful architecture of Better Bobby rearranging itself around this new information, this small, enormous thing you've just given him. A name. His own name. Not the one he stole. The one you chose.

You lean your head against his shoulder lightly.

You can feel it through the contact between you, through the place where your temple rests against his shoulder. Something in him settles. Deepens. A satisfaction so total it's almost palpable, like a beam slotting into place.

He likes it. Being seen as separate, being known as his own being. Not the understudy, not a replacement, not the better version of someone else, but simply a version of himself. You can feel how much he likes it in the way his thumb resumes its slow circuit over your knuckles, in the way his head tips to rest on yours, in the breath he lets out that sounds like it's been held for centuries.

“BB,” he repeats, testing it. His voice comes in a low, warm rumble. Bobby's timbre with something deeper underneath, and the two letters sit in the balmy air, small and perfect.

“Yeah,” you breathe. “BB.” A beat, then, “Thank you. For hearing me.”

A hum starts low in his chest, a thrum you feel before you hear it. It travels the length of his arm to where his fingers are laced through yours. He squeezes once, and when he speaks again, the easy charm has drained out of his voice, leaving it quieter, almost reticent.

“I was lonely too,” he admits.

Your heart squeezes, quick and helpless.

You sit together for a long, long time, the light pooling thick and lazy around you. And for the first time since you fell through the wall, what settles in your chest isn't fear, isn't confusion, and not grief.

It's peace.

The walk back is different.

BB leads you through the same threshold, and the yellow returns, followed by the buzz that resettles on your skin like a coat you forgot you were wearing. But something in you has shifted. Loosened. The meadow is still sitting inside your chest, warm and quiet. You carry it back into Level 0 the way you'd carry a cupped handful of water.

And you're talking.

Actually talking. Not the halting, guarded exchanges of the past weeks. Or the questions that go in circles, the silences that stretch like hallways.

You're talking, and BB is listening. Somewhere between the threshold and the familiar territory of your room, you say something about Clark—about the time Clark tried to assemble a display bookshelf himself and got the shelves in upside down, and you'd had to redo the entire thing at midnight while Clark stood behind you insisting it looked fine—and BB laughs.

It's a good laugh. It's Bobby's laugh. Low, surprised, that huff through the nose that real Bobby does when something catches him off guard, and it makes you smile. Actually smile. Your cheeks ache with it. 

You can't remember the last time your face did that.

“He sounds like an idiot,” BB remarks, grinning. That cocky half-grin, the one that crinkles one eye.

“He's not—okay, he's a little bit of an idiot. But he means well. He’s just going through a rough patch right now. He doesn't know how to—”

“Accept help?”

“I was going to say read an instruction manual.”

BB snorts. “Same thing.” 

He bumps your shoulder with his. Easy. Playful. And you bump him back, and the normalcy of it—the sheer, stupid, ordinary normalcy of walking and talking and bumping shoulders with someone—is so sweet it makes your throat tight with a different kind of ache. An emotion closer to joy, which is worse because joy in a place like this is borrowed. 

“You know,” you begin, squinting at him, “for a—” You stop, gesturing vaguely at him. “You're not bad company.”

“Not bad company.” He puts his hand over his chest. Bobby's mock-wounded face, the one real Bobby used to pull when you beat him at cards. “I'm overcome with emotion.”

“Shut up.”

“No, no, I'm serious. I'm going to treasure this moment. Not bad company. I'm getting that tattooed.”

“Can you even get a tattoo?”

His mouth hooks into that infuriating half-smirk that unfailingly warmed your blood for years, “Baby, I can do whatever I—”

He stops.

Mid-word. Mid-stride. His body goes rigid so fast it's like watching someone get hit with a current. Every muscle locking at once, his hand tightening on yours hard enough to hurt. His head turns. Not the way a person turns their head. The way a thing turns. Too sharp, too angular, his chin cocking to one side at a degree that doesn't belong on a human neck with a faint click. His eyes go flat and dark, and the creature behind them surges to the surface, breaching deep water.

You suck in a breath, eyes snapping around you, searching. “BB?”

He doesn't answer. He's listening. Every line of his body orients toward something you can't hear, his nostrils flaring slightly, and the hum in the walls shifts tone. Barely. A semitone. Like the whole level just inhaled.

“BB, what—”

He moves.

He doesn't explain. His hand releases yours and both of his are on your shoulders, turning you, walking you. Fast, with an urgency you haven't seen from him before, not even with the strange thing in the hallway. His jaw is set, eyes scanning the corridor with a focus that's mechanical, inhuman, processing information from sources you can't perceive.

“Please talk to me—”

“Shh.”

It’s not BB's voice. But an older rumble. Something that's done calculating, moved on to acting, and doesn't have the bandwidth for warmth right now.

He takes you to your room. The warm nest. The blankets. He guides you down with one hand on the back of your head, the way you'd ease someone into a car, pulling the blankets around you, and you grab his wrist because his eyes are wrong. They're flat, black, and old.

The thing in the hallway, whatever it is, has made him become the thing he was in the dark with the Smiler, and that version of BB is a version you can't reach.

“Stay here,” he instructs sternly. His voice is low and tight, thrumming with that sub-frequency that vibrates in the walls. “Don't move. Don't make a sound.”

“What's happening? What's—”

“Stay.”

He looks at you. One second. A flash of the warmth—buried deep, almost submerged, but there, still—and then his expression closes like a door slamming. BB straightens and turns toward the hallway.

You blink, and he's gone.

Just gone. Between one blink and the next, the space where BB stood is empty. The air where his body was is settling, displaced, like water closing over the place where a stone sank. 

The hum holds its earlier shifted note. That slightly wrong semitone, tense and high, like a held breath.

You sit in the blankets with your knees pulled to your chest, heart in your throat, and stare at the empty doorway and beyond it, listening intently.

Nothing. No tearing. No shrieking. No sounds at all. Just the hum and the buzz and your own breathing and the silence so total it frightens you more. 

You wait.

The meadow is still inside you: the bird, the stream, the warm light, the way BB laughed when you told him about Clark's bookshelf. The stupid, gentle joke about the tattoo, the way his shoulder bumped yours, and you bumped him back, and for thirty seconds, you forgot where you were and what he was, and the whole impossible situation felt like a walk home from somewhere good with someone you liked.

You press your face into your knees. You wrap your arms around yourself.

You wait.

BB comes back eventually.

You don't know how long it's been. Time in the Backrooms is a broken clock. Sometimes the minutes stretch into hours; sometimes what feels like an afternoon is over before a thought can finish forming. 

You've been sitting in the blankets, knees to chest, listening to the hum slowly, slowly settle back to its normal pitch, the tension of Level 0 releasing one degree at a time. You didn't sleep. You didn't move. You just sat and breathed, holding the meadow inside you like a candle flame in cupped hands.

You hear him before you see him. Footsteps. Slow. The particular rhythm of his walk. Bobby's gait, but smoother, more intentional, the way a predator moves even when it's not hunting. Then his shape appears in the doorway.

Something's off.

He's standing the way he always stands—one shoulder against the doorframe, hip cocked, that easy lean—but the details are wrong. Slightly. His edges are too sharp. The line of his jaw looks as if it were drawn rather than grown. His skin has a quality to it, like wet paint, freshly applied. And his eyes.

BB’s eyes are settling. That's the only word for it. The flat, black depth that swallowed the warmth when he left is receding, draining away, and Bobby's eyes are rising to the surface again. You watch it happen. You watch him reassemble himself.

He was something else, you realise. Whatever he went to do, wherever he did while away, he dropped Bobby's face to do it. And what you're looking at now, standing in the doorway, is the process of putting it back on. Climbing back inside the shape of a person. Buttoning up the human suit.

“BB.”

He blinks. The last of the darkness drains from his eyes. He looks at you, and the warmth returns. In layers, like watching a photograph develop, his shoulders relaxing at the sight of you. The too-sharp lines of his face soften into the Bobby you know, and his mouth does that almost-smile, the one that says I'm here without words.

“Hey, baby.”

“What happened?”

Not a question. A demand. You say it flat and steady, holding his gaze, and you don't let him do the easy-grin deflection, the don't worry about it. You've had enough of that for one lifetime. You made him promise.

BB reads it on your face. The refusal to be contained.

He exhales through his nose—Bobby's habit, the one that means I don't want to talk about this, but I'm going to—and pushes off the doorframe and comes to sit beside you on the blankets. Close. His knee touches yours.

“There's something new,” he says after a pause. “In the Backrooms. Something I haven't encountered before.”

You stare. “An… entity?”

“Yes.” He turns the word over like he's not sure it's sufficient. “It’s been… circling. Mainly the perimeter of Level 0. Not entering. Not yet anyway. Just... moving along the edge. Testing it.” His jaw works. That muscle at the hinge, the one that flexes when Bobby's thinking, when Bobby's holding something back. “It's been doing it intermittently. Coming close, then retreating. Like it's taking measurements.”

A shiver skitters down your spine. “What does it want?”

“I don't know.” And you understand that BB doesn't say I don't know often or easily. BB is the thing that knows this place, that moves through it like blood through a vein, that owns Level 0. Admitting ignorance is not in his nature. It sits wrong on his face, like a shirt buttoned crooked. “It's different from the others. Not like the Smiler. Not like the Howlers, either. Not like anything in my experience. It's very new.” A tense pause, then, “And very, very powerful.”

The way he says powerful makes the hum in the walls dip. Just for a second. A brief, almost subliminal drop in frequency, as if Level 0 itself heard the word and flinched.

You stare at him, your heart thrumming in your chest. Bobby's face, creased with a concern that doesn't quite fit the cocky architecture of it. BB in a rare moment of honesty about his own limits. Something new, he said. Something powerful. Something that makes a thing that unmade another entity with its bare hands sit next to you on a pile of blankets and admit it doesn't have an answer.

You exhale, turning to stare at the yellow wall instead. 

“I want you to teach me,” you tell him after a moment.

His head turns. The dog-tilt. Quick, surprised.

You look back towards him. “About this place. The levels. The entities. The doors, the rules, whatever—I want to understand it. I don't want to just—” You gesture at the blankets, the room, the warm patch you've been sleeping in for however long you've been here. “I don't want to be something you put in a nest and guard. I want to know what's out there. How to move through it. I don't want to be helpless whenever you leave.”

BB studies you. That long, reading look, line by line, extracting meaning. You expect resistance. Protectiveness. The instinct to keep you in the soft, warm place where nothing can touch you, where he can fold himself around you like armour and pretend the world ends at the walls of this room.

Instead, slowly, he nods.

“There are rules,” he insists. The caution is audible. Measured, considered, a thing that’s used to absolute control, negotiating the edges of a concession. “I go with you. Always. You don't wander alone. Not until you understand enough.”

“Okay.”

“And there are levels I won't take you to. Places where my presence doesn't offer the protection it does on 0. Places where—” He pauses, choosing his words the way you'd choose a path through uneven ground. “Places where going would be… foolish.”

“Okay. Deal.”

You watch him watch you, just like earlier in the sunlight. “Okay,” he says eventually. “I'll teach you.”

Time passes.

You don't know how much. The Backrooms don't have seasons, don't have sunrise and sunset. No reliable Monday into Tuesday into Wednesday that structures a life on the other side of the wall. What you have is rhythm—the rhythm of sleep and waking, of walking and resting, of BB's hand on yours as he leads you through doorways you're learning to see.

You miss the real world.

It hits you at strange moments. 

Not when you'd expect, not during the long stretches of yellow or the nights when the hum shifts pitch and BB goes rigid and watchful beside you. It hits you in the quiet. In the nothing moments.

You'll be sitting in the nest sketching a corridor layout, and the pen will skip, and you'll shake it the way you used to shake the pens at Clark's register. And the muscle memory will drag the whole world through. 

The smell of the showroom, lemon polish and particleboard, the radio playing low from the boombox behind the counter, the particular quality of California dusk through the front windows when the strip mall parking lot emptied out.

The apartment. The couch. The sound of Bobby's camera clicking in the other room.

You miss rain. Not Level 14 rain, or drizzle of the Poolrooms. Actual rain, East Bay winter rain, the kind that hammered the apartment windows and turned the parking lot at Clark's into a shallow lake and made Bobby curse because he'd left the car windows cracked again.

You miss the smell of wet asphalt. You even miss traffic. The dull boredom of a slow Tuesday shift with no customers, leaning on the counter with a magazine, watching the clock crawl toward closing.

You miss cereal. The specific crunch of it, dry, eaten by the handful out of the box at midnight because you were too tired to make real food after a close. You miss the weight of your own blankets on your bed, not the gathered nest-pile BB assembled for you. You miss the answering machine clicking on. You miss the phone ringing at all.

You think about going back.

Not the way you thought about it in the first weeks. That was rantic, clawing, animal desperation to find the wall you fell through and push back to the other side. That's burned out. What's left is quieter. More deliberate. A slow, circular calculation that runs in the background of your brain like a programme you can't close: Is there a way? If BB knows the doors, if the doors go between levels, if levels connect to each other in ways that don't follow geometry, could one of them connect back? Could there be a threshold that opens onto Clark's storage basement, onto the real world?

You don't ask BB. Because the calculation always stalls at the same place, the same, indestructible wall. 

The wall in your chest. The one built from the last six months of your life in Santa Clara, from every unanswered question and unfinished sentence and cold sheet and blue TV light and grunt. 

The wall that asks one simple question: Go back to what?

Go back to the apartment where Bobby looked through you like glass? Go back to the doorway where you stood with your keys in your hand and your heart in your eyes, and he didn't look up? Go back to being the woman who measures love in deficits, who keeps count of kisses the way she keeps count of inventory, watching the numbers dwindle, knowing exactly what the shortage means, and not being able to stop counting.

Bobby is probably relieved.

The thought arrives fully formed, mid-step, on a walk through Level 4, and it stops you so completely that BB turns back, his hand sliding to the small of your back, his head doing that quick, concerned tilt. You wave him off. Fine. I'm fine. But the thought is there now, lodged behind your sternum like a splinter, and you can feel it every time you breathe.

Bobby is probably relieved. Bobby is probably sleeping diagonally again. Bobby is probably eating cereal over the sink, leaving his bowl on the counter. Watching TV with his feet up and the apartment is probably messier, quieter. Less cluttered without your books and your magazines and your shoes by the door.

Your presence in every corner asking to be noticed. 

Bobby is probably lighter, breathing easier. Maybe he looked up from the television one day and realised the doorway was empty and felt—what? Guilt? Or the guilty cousin of relief, the exhale of a man whose obligation to pretend has been finally lifted?

You haven't felt needed in months. Not once.

The realisation surfaces slowly, a gradual saturation of a truth you've been standing ankle-deep in since before you fell through the wall. 

Bobby didn't need you. Bobby needed the idea of you—the girlfriend, the warm body, the person in the apartment who made it feel less empty—but he didn't need you. The particular, inconvenient you who wanted to be talked to and looked at and held and kissed goodbye every morning. That version of you was too much work. 

That version required maintenance he couldn't be bothered to perform.

But the ache—god, the ache. It hasn't faded. You thought it would. You thought time and distance and the sheer alien absurdity of your circumstances would erode it the way the Backrooms erode seemingly everything. Until the original shape is unrecognisable. 

But the ache for Bobby sits in the centre of your chest like a second heartbeat, stubborn and alive, and it doesn't care that he let you down.

It doesn't care that the last thing he gave you was a grunt. Love has no quality control. Love doesn't audit the recipient and adjust its intensity based on merit. 

You still love Bobby with the same enormous, stupid devotion you loved him with on that Thursday morning when the sun was on the sheets and he ignored the phone and pulled you closer and rasped stay. That love has not diminished by a single degree despite every reason it should have, and the persistence of it is the cruellest thing about being here. 

Because it means you’re aching for a man who made you feel invisible while standing in front of a being who has never once looked away.

You cry about it. Once. In the nest, in the dark, turned away from BB, muffling it in the blankets.

He doesn't say anything. His hand finds your shoulder. His thumb moves, once, twice, a slow circuit over the curve of bone. He doesn't ask what's wrong because he already knows—he's always known, he heard it all through the wall—and the kindness of his silence, the restraint of it, the choice to hold space instead of fill it, makes you cry harder.

You stop crying. You wipe your face. You pick up the notebook.

And you start mapping instead.

BB finds the notebook for you. God knows where, god knows how, a composition book with a mottled black-and-white cover and pages that smell like basement storage. 

You hold it and the weight of it in your hands feels so familiar it aches. The pen he gives you is a ballpoint, blue ink, the cheap kind that skips if you press too hard. You uncap it and the click of the cap settles something in your chest. An old reflex. The same one that used to kick in when you opened the inventory binder at the store. 

The satisfaction of a system, a structure, a way to organise chaos into a shape you can hold.

If you can't go back, you'll go forward. If you can't be needed there, you'll be needed here. Anything but the slow decay of being unwanted. And then, one day, when you're ready, you'll ask BB to find you a door back.

One day.

Level 0 comes first. The hallways you know, the ones BB takes you through, the turns and junctions and the places where the carpet changes texture and means something. A border, a threshold, a shift in territory. 

You draw diagrams. Floor plans. Rough, imprecise, the proportions wrong because the proportions are wrong. Because the hallways don't obey geometry in any way you can verify. But the act of drawing them—of putting pen to paper, using the things Clark used to tell you about rendering shapes and rooms—makes it less vast. Less formless. Containable. 

The pen moves and the world shrinks and for the first time in months you have purpose.

BB watches you work with undisguised fascination.

He sits beside you while you sketch, his chin on your shoulder, his breath warm on your neck, and sometimes he corrects you (that corridor turns left, not right or there's a junction there you haven't found yet) and sometimes he just watches your hand move and hums in his throat. That low, warm rumble that you've started to associate with contentment. 

His chin digs into your shoulder when he leans in to see your shorthand and you flick his nose without looking up and he huffs—offended, amused, delighted, nosing closer—and the exchange is so easy, so thoughtless, so much like two people who’ve known each other long enough that the edges have been worn smooth by repetition.

Half the time you forget he's not human.

That's the truth you don't examine too closely. Because it would mean confronting what it says about you, about your standards, about how broken your idea of normal has become. 

But BB sits beside you with his chin on your shoulder and his warmth against your side. He asks about your shorthand, remembers the answer, asks follow-up questions. He brings you food without being asked.

The line between an inhuman entity wearing a man's face and a person who cares about me blurs until it's less a line and more a smudge, a gradation, a slow dissolve from one thing into the other.

He cares for you. Genuinely. Not the way you care for a pet. 

You see it in the small things first. The way he checks the temperature of the carpet before he lets you sit, and how he positions himself between you and the corridor when you sleep. His head turns toward you when you shift in the nest, tracking your movement the way a compass tracks north. 

Most of all in how he says your name. Not baby, not the endearment—your actual name, the one he uses rarely, carefully, like he's holding it in his mouth and tasting each syllable. When BB says your name, it sounds like a discovery. Like a fact he's still pleased to know.

“You're organising it,” he says one day. Amused. Impressed. “The way you organised the inventory at the store.”

“It helps me think.”

“You're applying human systems to a place that doesn't follow human rules.”

“Is that a problem?”

He considers this. His head tilts. “No,” he replies slowly, like he's arriving at a conclusion that surprises him. “No, I think it might be… useful. No one's ever tried to map it like this. Most wanderers are too busy surviving to catalogue."

“Well,” you say teasingly. “I've got you for the surviving part.”

He goes quiet. You glance up from the notebook. His face is going through layers again, rearranging, the cocky default giving way to the newer expression underneath. The one that showed up when you named him. A door opening inward.

He catches you looking, and the default snaps back, the half-grin, the raised eyebrow.

“Yeah,” he drawls lightly. Entirely failing to conceal the sudden warmth radiating off him like heat from a furnace. “Yeah, you do.”

You add to the notebook every day. Layouts, landmarks, and the sensory details that serve as navigation. 

BB takes you exploring.

Not every day. Some days the hum is wrong, or BB is tense in a way he won't explain, or you can feel the level holding its breath the way it did the night he disappeared and came back wearing a freshly assembled face. On those days, you stay in the nest. You write in the notebook. You read the pages you've already filled and trace the paths you've already walked and commit them to memory because memory is the only filing system you've got. 

On those days, the ache comes back—Bobby's hands, Bobby's mouth, the way he used to drop his forehead against yours in the dark and whisper your name, just your name, over and over—and you let it sit in your chest and you don't fight it. But you don't follow it, either. 

You just write around it. Inventory the grief the way you inventory everything else. Label it. File it. Move on to the next entry.

But most days, BB takes you out.

Level 1, first. BB walks beside you, and his posture changes here. Subtly mostly, the ease tightening into a coiled attention. His head on a swivel, hand at the small of your back with a pressure that says I'm tracking everything in this room and nothing will get within twenty feet of you.

You sketch the layout in the notebook while he stands guard. You mark the exits, the supply caches, the places where other wanderers have left graffiti on the shelving units. Messages, warnings, crude maps of their own.

You get braver. You ask questions. About the Smilers, the Howlers, about the hierarchy of things that live here. How they relate to each other and what makes some dangerous and some merely present. 

BB answers. Not always fully, not always clearly. There are concepts here that he doesn't have a human language for. Mechanics that exist in the gap between what he perceives and what your brain can hold, but he answers, and you write it all down, and the notebook fills.

You develop a routine. You wake up, eat whatever BB has found or produced, and you walk. You explore together, map, and come back. You sit together in the nest afterwards and talk. 

And the talking is easier now, less charged, less careful. You tell him about your life. The books you loved. The way you used to organise your bookshelves by colour rather than by author, because it made you happy to look at them. The hiking trails in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Big Basin and Castle Rock, the way the redwoods smelled after rain.

He listens the way he always listens. Total attention. Full presence. The thing Bobby couldn't do. The thing BB does like breathing.

And you catch yourself, one evening, doing something unthinkable. 

You’re sitting in the nest with your notebook open, pen behind your ear, telling BB about the time you got lost on the Skyline-to-the-Sea trail. You had to navigate back using a park map you'd annotated so heavily it was more your handwriting than cartography. BB’s laughing. That low huff through his nose, his shoulder pressed against yours. 

You're laughing too, and the yellow light is warm, and you realise, suddenly, that you haven’t thought about Bobby in three days.

The guilt is instantaneous.

A hot, lurching, physical thing that grabs you by the sternum and pulls. Three days. You went three days without the ache, and the absence of it feels like a betrayal so total it makes you nauseous. As if the love you carry for Bobby is a fire that requires constant tending, and you let it gutter, and that makes you—what? 

The kind of woman who forgets? The kind who moves on? The kind who finds comfort in a pair of borrowed eyes while the original owner of those eyes is somewhere in Santa Clara, probably sleeping diagonal, probably relieved?

You go quiet. BB notices. 

His shoulder presses against yours (a question, not a demand), and you shake your head, picking up the pen. Start sketching a corridor you mapped that morning, but the lines are slightly too hard, the ink pressing dents into the page. 

BB watches your hand and says nothing, and the nothing is the right thing, the exact right thing, and you hate him a little for being so consistently, unbearably right.

You grow comfortable.

Not comfortable like safe, or comfortable like home. Because this place is neither of those things, and you know it. The notebook full of entity classifications and danger ratings is proof that you know it.

But comfortable the way you get with a person—a being, entity, a whatever-he-is—when enough time has passed that their presence stops being a question and starts being an answer. 

You stop flinching when he appears in doorways. You stop tensing when his hand finds yours. You lean into his shoulder when you're tired, and he holds steady. The meadow on Level 14 becomes your Sunday, your weekend, the place he takes you when the yellow gets to be too much, and you need to remember what sky looks like.

You stop keeping count.

You don't notice it happening. It's quiet cessation of a habit so ingrained you didn't know it was still running until it stopped. 

No more tallying. No more, he didn't today, that's the fourth day in a row. Because BB doesn't generate deficits. BB doesn't create gaps to count. He’s present the way the hum is present. Woven into the structure of your days so thoroughly that his attention isn't an event anymore, it's an environment. 

You live inside his attention the way you live inside Level 0. It's just where you are.

But the ache for Bobby doesn't go away. Only migrates from the centre of your chest to somewhere deeper, somewhere quieter, a room in the back of you where it can sit with the memory of your first kiss and his arm around your shoulder by the ocean and the way he used to say stay and mean it. 

You don't visit that room every day anymore. But you know it's there. You can feel its weight when you lie down at night, BB's arm around your waist, his breath on your neck. 

The ache says remember, and you say I know, and you close your eyes, and you stay.

Your handwriting fills the notebook. Page after page. The careful, slightly messy script. A system. A structure. 

A way to survive.

“It's circling again.”

You look up sharply. 

BB is standing at the edge of the nest, head tilted, that almost-human listening posture—chin cocked, eyes unfocused, his whole body oriented toward a frequency you can't hear. His jaw is tight.

You set the pen down. “How close?”

“Closer than last time,” ee says evenly, too evenly. “It's running along the edge and then pulling back. Then running a little further.”

Ignoring the sudden chill at your nape, you say, “Like it's looking for a gap.”

His eyes flick to you. A beat of surprise follows. Quick and subtle, the kind he still has when you demonstrate that you've been paying attention to the lessons, that the notebook isn't just busywork but comprehension.

“Yes,” he agrees. “Like that.”

You pull your knees up. Wrap your arms around them. The notebook sits open on the blanket beside you, the page half-covered in your shorthand. A corridor map, danger annotations, the new symbol you invented last week for an unknown entity, and behaviour unclassified. You used it for the first time yesterday. The ink is still dark.

“What are you going to do?”

“I need to check the perimeter. See if anything's shifted. If it's been probing a specific section or moving along the full boundary.” He's already calculating. The ancient one surfaces behind Bobby's eyes, not all the way, just enough to sharpen the edges. To give his posture that predatory geometry that doesn't belong on a twenty-something in a crop top. “I want to understand its pattern before I kill it.”

“BB.” You say his name, and he stills. Focuses. The ancient thing recedes a fraction, and the warmth returns to the surface. You hold his gaze and say, carefully, gently, “Be careful.”

His mouth parts. 

He crosses the nest in two steps. Drops into a crouch in front of you, his knees on the blanket, and his hand finds the side of your head. His fingers glide over one side of your face slowly. He strokes, long, gentle, from your temple to the nape of your neck. 

“Stay here,” he says gently, his thumb tracing the curve behind your ear. “Stay in the nest. Don't go into the corridor. Not even the first junction.”

“I know the rules.”

“I know you know.” His hand stills in your hair, cupping the back of your skull. He dips his head until his forehead is close to yours, not quite touching, his breath warm on your face. His eyes are darker, layered, and the thing behind them is looking at you, too. For a moment, both of them are present. BB and the creature he's built on top of, and both of them are saying the same thing. “I'll be back.”

“You better be.”

The corner of his mouth lifts. Just barely. The private curve that's his and not Bobby's, the one you named into existence in a meadow on Level 14. He presses his lips to your forehead. Holds them there for a beat. You feel the hum vibrate through the contact, that low sub-frequency that lives in his chest and transfers through skin, settling behind your sternum like a second pulse.

Then he straightens. His hand slides from your hair. The softness drops from his posture in a single clean motion. 

What's left is the thing that walks these hallways, silent and certain and very, very old.

He rounds the corner, and the yellow swallows him.

You pick up the pen. Open the notebook to a fresh page. You write: Entity X — perimeter — closer. Testing the boundary for gaps. BB checking pattern. Unknown motivation. Unknown capability.

You underline unknown twice.

Eleven minutes.

You know this because you've been counting. 

Your brain just does it now, keeps a running tally of the seconds since his silhouette disappeared. Because your body has learned that when he's not here, the math of your survival changes. 

With him, you’re the safest thing in this strange place. Without him, you’re a girl sitting on a damp carpet in a place that eats people. But BB always comes back, you remind yourself. Always. 

You're sketching the rough map of the corridors you explored yesterday, trying to get the proportions right on a hallway junction that you're fairly sure had five walls, when you hear the footsteps.

Not his. His steps are almost silent, a predator's tread, weight distributed in a way that isn't quite human. These are boots. Multiple sets. Heavy, deliberate.

You close the notebook slowly.

Six figures come around the corner.

Not researchers BB warned you about. Wrong uniforms, wrong insignia, a logo you don't recognise stitched onto black tactical gear. They're armed. Not with the improvised weapons most wanderers carry. Real weapons. Professional grade. The kind that suggests funding, organisation, a chain of command that exists somewhere outside this place.

The one in front spots you and signals the others to stop. He says something into the radio on his shoulder, clipped and fast, and you catch the words “confirmed,” and “companion” and “entity absent.”

They waited for BB to leave.

“Ma'am.” The lead one steps forward. Voice flat. Professional. “You need to come with us. We're here to extract you.”

Your body tenses at those words, coiling, and you stand at once. “No.”

It comes out sharper than you expect. Hard-edged. The backrooms have made you harder than you realise.

“Ma'am, that's not—”

“I said no,” you repeat firmly. “I'm not going anywhere with a bunch of strangers.”

His jaw tightens. He glances at the others. Some signal passes between them. A shift in posture, a nod, the silent language you’re not privy to.

He reaches for your arm.

You hit him.

A closed fist, fast, driven by weeks of survival instinct and adrenaline and the specific, white-hot fury of being grabbed by a stranger in a place where the only person who touches you has earned it inch by inch.

Your knuckles connect with his cheekbone. The man’s head snaps sideways, and for one bright second, you feel savage satisfaction.

Then three of them are on you.

You kick. You bite. Drive your elbow into someone's throat and hear someone choke behind you. You're feral with it. No technique, no training, just the scrappy, vicious fighting of a girl who's survived the backrooms and is not going to be dragged by men who couldn’t even bother to introduce themselves. 

Your nails rake across someone's forearm and draw blood. You wrench free of one grip and slam your heel into a kneecap. Someone swears, loud, furious.

“Fucking—hold her, HOLD HER—”

A hand fists in your hair. Yanks. Your neck snaps back, and your eyes water. Someone wrenches your arm behind you hard enough that the joint screams. You thrash, snarling. Your free hand catches someone across the mouth. You feel a tooth cut your knuckle.

The lead one is in front of you again. There's a red mark blooming on his cheekbone where you hit him, and his professionalism has curdled into something uglier.

“You want to do this the hard way?”

You spit at him. It catches his vest.

He hits you.

Open palm across your face. Your head rocks to one side. The world around you whites out for half a second, and then there's carpet under your hands and knees. Your lip throbs, burning numb, and you can taste copper in your mouth, dribbling. A boot slots between your shoulder blades, pressing you flat, and your cheek presses against the damp fibres. 

Your wrists get pinned behind you roughly at an angle that sends bright, screaming pain up to your shoulder.

“Stay DOWN—”

You’re on the floor, bleeding. There’s a boot on your back and hands pinning your wrists. You’re away from the only safe thing in this place, and the carpet is wet against your split lip. You’re afraid. For the first time since your encounter with the Smiler, you’re terrified. Immediate, animal fear of being held down by someone stronger than you.

You open your mouth. You fill your lungs.

And you scream.

“BB—”

One word. It tears out of your throat raw and desperate, hitting the yellow walls, and the walls absorb it, and the walls move.

The fluorescent lights don't flicker. They detonate.

Every tube in the hallway blows simultaneously, glass raining down like ice, and in the darkness that follows, the hum of level 0 drops—drops—drops into a frequency that you feel in your teeth, in your ribs, in the boot on your back that suddenly isn't pressing as hard because the man wearing it has stopped breathing. Not dead. Frozen. 

The way an animal freezes in terror when it smells something at the top of the food chain.

The walls crack. Clean fissures running floor to ceiling, splitting the drywall in deliberate, surgical lines, as if something were tearing its way through the building's architecture. The carpet ripples under your cheek. You feel it. The backrooms responding, contracting, the whole of level 0 seizing like a body in pain.

The boot lifts off your back.

Not because the man chose to move it. Because the floor tilted. Subtle. Just enough to shift his weight. Just enough to free you. The backrooms—him, it, the thing that is both—clearing the path.

You hear them before you see them react. The soldiers. Breathing fast. The click of weapons being raised. Someone screaming “what the fuck what the fuck what the—”

He comes out of the dark.

Not through a door but from the dark itself. Like the darkness peeled open and someone stepped through the seam. 

He’s not fully human-shaped.

The Bobby suit is slipping. Shoulders too wide. Arms too long, hanging at angles that make your hindbrain scream. His fingers have too many joints—you can see them in the fractured emergency glow of the one tube that didn't shatter—long and wrong, curling like they're remembering a shape that predates hands. 

His face is still Bobby's face but the geometry behind it is pressing outward, cheekbones like blades, jaw too sharp, too angular, the skull beneath rearranging itself into something that was never meant to be looked at directly. And his eyes are black. Fully, completely, endlessly black. Two holes in the front of his skull that open onto something without a floor.

He sees you on the ground.

The blood on your lip. The bruises on your skin. The tear tracks cutting down your face.

BB sees the boot print on your back.

There’s a sound.

It booms from the walls, the floor, and the ceiling simultaneously. From every surface of level 0, because he is level 0, and every square inch of it is snarling.

The remaining fluorescent tube doesn't shatter. 

It melts. The glass softens and drips. The carpet under the soldiers' feet goes wet, soaked, saturated, as though the floor is turning into a swamp.

You press your face into the carpet and close your eyes.

It takes less than a minute.

You don't watch, but you hear it. Screaming that starts human and ends keening. Wet sounds. Heavy sounds. The particular acoustic signature of a body being opened by something that doesn't need tools. That horrible, snarling, clicking growl of pure rage.

One of them manages to fire a weapon, and the sound of the shot is enormous in the enclosed hallway. It cuts out, followed by a crunch of bone, and another, and another, and another—

Then there's nothing.

Silence.

The level settles. The hum reasserts itself, climbing back up from that sub-basement frequency to its usual buzz. You can feel it in the carpet against your cheek, scratchy and too warm.

One fluorescent tube fizzes back to life overhead. Yellow. Sickly. 

You feel the air change. The temperature drops, and you know he's close before anything touches you. 

When it does—a hand on your shoulder, delicate, so delicate—it's not quite a hand yet. Too many joints. The fingers too long, still retracting to Bobby's proportions, still remembering how to be the thing that strokes your hair instead of the thing that just—

You turn over.

He's crouching over you. Still wrong. The proportions haven't settled. BB’s arms are too long, and his spine is curved at an angle that doesn't work with human vertebrae. His face is a rough draft. Bobby's features sketched over the older, sharper one. Black fluid coats his hands. His jaw. His chest. Not all of it is black.

His eyes are still dark, but the blue is bleeding back in around the edges. Like ink dropped into water, spreading, reclaiming.

You reach for him.

Your hands are shaking so badly that you miss the first time. 

Your fingers slip against the wrong texture of his jaw, the skin too smooth, too cool, still settling back to its bony configuration. You reach again, and this time you get his neck (too long, the vertebrae too prominent, sharp ridges under your palms where Bobby's neck was smooth), and you pull.

You pull yourself into him, and you cling. 

Arms around his neck, face buried in his throat, legs curling up, making yourself as small as possible against his chest because if you can get close enough, maybe nothing will ever reach you again. 

You wrap yourself around him with a muffled sob. One sob, then another, then a third that breaks open into something ragged and ugly and not at all brave.

You’re shaking and bleeding, crying into the neck of a monster, and you don't care. You don't care about the wrong temperature, the wrong shape or the black fluid soaking into your shirt. 

You don't care.

BB freezes. One second. Two. The violence still running, the gentleness needing a moment to boot up. You feel it. The exact instant the system switches. His whole body shudders once, and then his arms come around you.

Tight. So tight. He scoops you up like you're nothing—one arm under your legs, one around your back—and pulls you into his chest and holds you against him like he's trying to absorb you. Like he could fold you into his body and keep you there where nothing touches you ever again. 

His chin comes down on the top of your head. His whole body curves around you. You feel the strength in every inch of him. The same strength that just did what it just did, repurposed. Every ounce of force that tore six armed men apart, now calibrated with impossible precision to the exact pressure of holding without breaking.

“I'm here.” His voice. Rough. Not fully Bobby's voice yet. There's an edge underneath it still, something vast and deep, like hearing someone speak from several floors down. “I'm here, baby. I'm here.”

You press closer. Your fingers curl into the fabric of his jacket. Bobby's jacket. Your face is against his throat, and you can feel the absence of a pulse under your cheek. No heartbeat. Just the hum. His hum. Vibrating through his chest and into yours.

“They—” Your voice is thick, muffled against his skin. “They grabbed me, they were trying to—I fought, I tried to—”

“I know.” His hand finds the back of your head. Cradles it. His fingers—the right number of joints now, almost fully Bobby-shaped again—thread into your hair the way they do in the nest, slow, gentle, the careful repetitive motion that means safe, you're safe, I'm here. “I know. It's over.”

“There were six of them and I couldn't—”

“You don't have to.”

His other hand finds your face. Tilts it up. His thumb traces your split lip with a touch so light it barely registers. Just the ghost of contact, the pad of his thumb skating over the cut, and you watch his jaw tighten. The blue in his eyes flickers. Darkness swims underneath it, surfacing and submerging, and you know he is looking at the blood on your mouth, and memorising who put it there, and the fact that they’re already dead is not enough. Will never be enough.

“Does it hurt?” Quiet. Bobby's voice now, almost entirely. That specific soft register he uses in the nest, the one that makes your chest ache.

“A little.”

His thumb moves to the bruise on your cheekbone. Traces the edge of it. Down to your jaw. Along the finger-shaped marks on your wrist, and the sound he makes is barely audible. Low, tight snarl. A vibration caught behind his teeth.

“I should have been here.”

“You came.”

“Not fast enough.”

You almost laugh. What comes out instead is a wet, clogged sound. “You came very quickly, BB.”

“Not fast enough,” he repeats, and means it. 

You put your head back against his chest. He holds you tighter. He hums. Shaky at first, the frequency wobbles. Then it steadies. Finding its rhythm. His song. The one that doesn't exist anywhere outside of him.

You feel the backrooms settle around you both. The lights dim softer. Temperature rises, degree by gentle degree, until the air feels like a room in a house instead of a hallway in purgatory. He’s doing that. Rewriting the space around your body because you’re shaking, and he can't make you stop shaking, but he can make everything else softer.

“BB.” Your voice is small. Muffled against his chest.

“Yeah?” Immediate. Soft.

“Don't leave.” You swallow. Press your face harder into the fabric of his jacket. “Just—for a bit. Don't leave.”

His arms tighten, cheek pressing against the top of your head. You feel him breathe—not because he needs to, but because you need to feel it, and he knows what you need, even before you know it yourself.

“Never,” he whispers.

One word. A law. Written into the fabric of this place. Never. As in: the sun will come up. As in: water runs downhill. As in: I will be here.

You close your eyes.

The shaking ebbs, not all at once but in increments, your body releasing its grip on the panic the way a fist unclenches. One finger, then another, then another. His hand keeps moving over your hair. Rhythmic. Patient. He will do this for as long as you need.

He will do this forever if you let him.

You stay like that. On the floor. In the hallway. Curled in the lap of a thing that’s just killed six men.

The backrooms are changing. You can feel it beneath you, a shuddering grind. Hallways folding. Routes sealing shut. The architecture of level 0 quietly, methodically, permanently rearranging itself around you both. Doors that used to lead here now lead nowhere. 

He’s taking you somewhere no one will find you.

And you let him. Eyes closed. Face against his chest. Listening to the hum.

You let him.

M.E.G. INTERNAL — MAJOR EXPLORER GROUP

DEPARTMENT OF ENTITY RESEARCH & CONTAINMENT

▓▓▓▓▓▓ CLASSIFIED // LEVEL 4 — RESTRICTED // URGENT REVIEW ▓▓▓▓▓▓

INCIDENT REPORT: IR-0-27 DOCUMENT ID: MEG-ENT-0000-IR-0-27 CLASSIFICATION: LEVEL 4 — URGENT FILED BY: Operations Director ██████ DATE: ██/██/199█ RE: Unauthorised Engagement With Entity 0 / Companion — Hostile Extraction Attempt by External Agency STATUS: CRITICAL — ONGOING CONSEQUENCES

SUMMARY OF INCIDENT

On ██/██/199█, at approximately ██:██ hours, a six-person tactical unit operating under the authority of ██████████████████████████████████ (hereafter "the Agency") conducted an unauthorised extraction attempt on the individual designated "the Companion" in M.E.G. Entity 0 documentation.

M.E.G. had no advance knowledge of this operation. We were not consulted or informed. We were not given the opportunity to do what we have spent the last eighteen months doing, which is explicitly and repeatedly recommending against exactly this course of action.

Our recommendation, stated in Section 7.2 of the Entity 0 dossier and reiterated in no fewer than six inter-agency memoranda, was as follows:

"Do not intervene. Do not extract. Do not, under any circumstances, threaten the Companion's safety within Entity 0's perceptual range."

The Agency disregarded this recommendation.

All six members of the tactical unit are dead.

RECONSTRUCTION OF EVENTS

The following timeline has been assembled from recovered equipment (three body cameras, one partially functional radio unit) and corroborating seismic data from M.E.G. monitoring equipment on Levels 0 through 3.

██:██ — Six-person tactical unit enters Level 0 via access point ██████. Equipment and insignia consistent with ██████████████████████████████████. The unit is armed with ██████████████████████████████████. They are equipped for a hostile extraction. This was not a rescue. This was a retrieval.

██:██ — Unit locates the Companion in a hallway junction on Level 0, sublevel ██████. Entity 0 is not present. Body camera footage confirms the unit waited for Entity 0 to leave the Companion's immediate vicinity before approaching. This indicates prior surveillance. The Agency was watching. We did not know they were watching. This is itself a security failure that is being reviewed separately.

██:██ — Unit lead makes verbal contact with the Companion. Instructs her to comply with the extraction. Companion refuses. She states clearly, on camera, that she does not wish to be removed. Her exact words are "No" and "I'm not going anywhere."

██:██ — Unit lead attempts physical restraint. The Companion resists violently. Body camera footage shows her striking the unit lead in the face, drawing blood from a secondary operative, and disabling a third with a knee strike before being subdued by multiple operatives simultaneously. She fought like someone who has been surviving the Backrooms for ██████, and it shows. The Companion is subsequently struck across the face by the unit lead and forced to the ground. Bruising consistent with forcible restraint is visible on both wrists.

I will repeat that for the record: a civilian who had clearly, verbally, on camera refused extraction was beaten to the floor by a six-person tactical unit. 

██:██ — M.E.G. seismic monitoring stations on Levels 0, 1, 2, and 3 register a simultaneous anomalous event. The reading does not correspond to any known geological or structural phenomenon. Dr. ██████ has described the waveform as "an earthquake." I am including her analysis verbatim because I do not have a better description.

██:██ — The Companion screams.

██:██ — Entity 0 arrives.

The gap between ██:██ and ██:██ is approximately 1.3 seconds. Entity 0's last confirmed position was ██████████████████████████████████, an estimated █████████████ meters from the Companion's location. It covered this distance in 1.3 seconds. We do not have a theoretical framework for this. We are not going to develop one. It doesn't matter. What matters is what happened next.

██:██ (CONCURRENT) — What we did not understand at the time—and what has only become clear through post-incident analysis—is that Entity 0 did not move through the Backrooms to reach the Companion. It moved the Backrooms.

Temporal monitoring equipment across Levels 0 through 266 recorded simultaneous, catastrophic time distortion events at the moment of Entity 0's displacement. On Level 1, clocks ran backwards for approximately 3.7 seconds. On Level 2, a monitoring team reported experiencing the same eleven-second interval twenty times in succession. On Level 49, two operatives aged approximately 6 years in the space of 1.3 real-time seconds. Medical examination confirmed accelerated cellular turnover consistent with temporal compression. Both operatives have been placed on medical leave.

Entity 0 tore through the temporal fabric of the Backrooms to close the distance between itself and the Companion. It did not navigate. It did not transit. It ripped a hole through the structure of the intervening space.

The damage on the lower levels was temporary. The damage on Level ███ was not.

Level ███ is gone.

Level ███—a fully mapped, documented, and intermittently populated level of the Backrooms—no longer exists. It was not sealed. M.E.G. operatives who attempted to access Level ███ via three separate confirmed entry points found nothing. Not empty corridors. Not blank walls. Nothing. The space that Level ███ occupied is simply absent. As though it was never there at all. 

Entity 0's transit path between its last confirmed location and the Companion passed directly through Level ███. The conclusion is unavoidable: Entity 0, in the 1.3 seconds it took to reach the Companion, annihilated an entire level of the Backrooms as collateral damage. The way a bullet destroys the wall behind the target. Level ███ was simply in the way.

We do not know if there were casualties. Level ███ was classified as intermittently populated. Wanderers passed through; some may have been sheltering there at the time of the event. We will likely never know. There is nothing left to recover. There is nothing left to examine. An entire level of reality was erased in 1.3 seconds.

Dr. ██████ has requested that this section of the report be classified as Level 5. I have denied this request. Everyone needs to read this. Everyone needs to understand what we are dealing with.

██:██ through ██:██ — Body camera footage for this period is partially corrupted. What remains has been reviewed by myself, Dr. ██████, and Dr. ███████████. Dr. ████ has declined to review it. Her decision is respected.

Entity 0 was not in its standard manifestation. I am not going to describe the specific deviations in this report. The footage is available for personnel with Level 4 clearance and a strong stomach.

The engagement lasted approximately 42 seconds.

Entity 0 did not use weapons. Entity 0 is the weapon.

All six operatives were killed. Cause of death for four: ████████████████████████ Cause of death for the remaining two: ██████████████████████████████████. Recovery of remains has been deemed inadvisable at this time, as Entity 0 ██████████████████████████████████.

██:██ — Final body camera footage shows Entity 0 approaching the Companion. It is partially restructured to its usual template, but not fully. The Companion does not retreat. She reaches for it. She clings to it. Entity 0 gathers her. The word "cradles" appears in three separate reviewer notes, and I am allowing it despite its lack of clinical precision because nothing else is accurate, and assumes a protective posture. Audio, though degraded, captures the Companion's voice saying something indistinct, and Entity 0 responding with a single word. Audio analysis has been unable to confirm the word. Dr. ██████ believes it was "never." The camera fails shortly after.

ASSESSMENT OF CONSEQUENCES

I said in Section 7.2 of the Entity 0 dossier that I did not want to see what it does to us. I have now seen it. I was right not to want to.

But the killings are not the primary concern of this report. Soldiers die. Operations fail. This is the nature of work in the Backrooms. The primary concern is what this incident has done to years of carefully maintained observational neutrality between M.E.G. and Entity 0.

Entity 0 tolerated us. That is not an exaggeration or a simplification. We have operated monitoring equipment on Level 0 for eighteen months. Entity 0 knew it was there. It knew we were watching. And it allowed it, the way a homeowner allows a bird to nest in their gutter. Not because they approve, but because it doesn't bother them enough to act.

That tolerance is, as of this incident, in question.

Within 48 hours of IR-0-27, the following changes were observed:

Level ███ remains nonexistent. Repeated attempts to locate it via all known access points have failed. Dr. ██████ has formally recommended that it be struck from the Backrooms cartography index. The level is not missing. It was unmade. The temporal scarring along Entity 0's transit path shows no sign of healing or regeneration. This is, as far as we can determine, permanent. An entire level of the Backrooms has been permanently destroyed as a byproduct of Entity 0's emotional response to a threat against the Companion. 

M.E.G. monitoring equipment on Level 0, sublevel ██████ through ██████, ceased functioning. Not damaged. Removed. Every sensor, every camera, every seismic monitor. Gone. No debris. No evidence of destruction. The equipment is simply no longer there.

Three M.E.G. personnel conducting routine observation on Level 0 reported that the hallways they had used for months had "rearranged." Routes that previously led to confirmed Companion sighting locations now terminate in dead ends. Level 0 has been restructured. We believe Entity 0 has deliberately altered the architecture to prevent future observation.

The Companion has not been sighted since IR-0-27. She is not at any previously confirmed location. The blanket nest—documented across seven sighting reports as Entity 0's primary base of operation with the Companion—is empty. Every blanket, every scavenged item, every trace of habitation has been removed. As though no one was ever there.

Entity 0 has not been sighted on Level 0 since IR-0-27.

The implication is clear: Entity 0 has relocated the Companion. To where, we do not know. Dr. ██████ has proposed that they may have moved to a sublevel of Level 0 that is not represented in our current mapping. A level beneath the level, a space that Entity 0 has carved out or always possessed and simply never used until now. Until it had a reason to hide something it could not afford to lose.

We have, in the space of one unauthorised operation conducted by an agency that ignored every warning we provided, lost the single greatest research asset in the history of M.E.G. entity studies. The Companion is gone. Our access is gone. Years of carefully accumulated observational data has been rendered functionally useless because the subject has moved to a location we cannot find and sealed the door behind it.

FORMAL OBJECTIONS

I want the following on the record:

M.E.G. explicitly, repeatedly, and in writing recommended against any attempt to extract, contain, or engage the Companion. These recommendations were provided to the Agency through proper inter-organisational channels on ██/██/198█, ██/██/198█, ██/██/198█, ██/██/199█, ██/██/199█, and ██/██/199█. Each was acknowledged. None were followed.

The Companion was not a hostage. She verbally refused extraction, clearly, and on camera. The Agency proceeded with force. This is not a rescue. This is an assault on a civilian by a government-adjacent organisation operating without jurisdiction inside a space they do not understand.

The Companion was injured. She fought back and was beaten to the ground for it. She bled. And the thing that has been protecting her heard her scream its name. We told them what it does to things that threaten what belongs to it. We told them. They didn't listen. At least six people are dead because they didn't listen.

Entity 0 has, until now, operated within a framework that M.E.G. was beginning to understand. It was predictable. Perhaps not in its actions, but in its priorities. The Companion was the variable. The Companion was the key. And now the Companion is gone, and Entity 0 has demonstrated that its response to perceived threats is not merely violent but architectural. It didn't just kill the threat. It restructured its entire domain to prevent the threat from recurring. It sealed Level 0. It erased its footprint. It took its Companion, and it disappeared.

An entire level of the Backrooms was destroyed. Gone. Erased from existence as collateral damage during Entity 0's transit. If there were wanderers sheltering on Level ███ they are dead. Or worse. Or something we don't have a word for because the space they occupied no longer exists in any meaningful sense. We will never know. The Agency's unauthorised operation may have cost lives far beyond the six operatives they sent in, and we have no way to calculate the true body count because there is nothing left to count.

We do not know where Entity 0 is. We do not know if it will allow future contact. We do not know if, the next time an M.E.G. operative enters Level 0, Entity 0 will distinguish between us and the Agency. We may have inherited the consequences of someone else's stupidity, and we may pay for it in personnel.

RECOMMENDATIONS

All M.E.G. operations on Level 0 are suspended indefinitely pending reassessment.

The Agency is to be formally censured and barred from independent Backrooms operations until further notice. Their response to this censure is noted and disregarded.

No further attempts to locate, contact, or extract the Companion are to be conducted by any organisation, under any authority, for any reason.

If—and I stress if—Entity 0 re-establishes contact with M.E.G. personnel, the interaction is to be treated as a diplomacy scenario, not a research scenario. Entity 0 is not a subject. Entity 0 is, functionally, a sovereign power that we have just watched an allied agency declare war on. We will conduct ourselves accordingly.

Someone needs to tell the Agency what "apex predator" means. I have included a dictionary to help and clear the confusion.

Filed: ██/██/199█

Operations Director ██████

Addendum, handwritten:

She screamed his name, and the level cracked open.

I've been doing this for eleven years. I have never seen a response that fast. 1.3 seconds. It wasn't travel. He didn't cross the distance. The distance stopped existing. She called, and the Backrooms folded to put him where she was. And everything between them—every hallway, every corridor, every room, an entire level—ceased to exist because it was in his way.

The body camera audio from the aftermath is mostly static. But there is a moment, mostly degraded, where you can hear humming. And underneath the humming, faintly, a voice. Hers. Saying "don't leave." And then his. One word.

We are not dealing with an entity that lives in the Backrooms.

We are dealing with the Backrooms. And it is in love.

God help us all.

He checks the answering machine. The red light is steady. No messages. The last thing you said to him—actually said, out loud, in person—was I'm closing tonight, don't wait up. He'd grunted. Hadn't looked up from the TV. He remembers that now.

You stood in the doorway with your keys in your hand and your jacket half-on, and you looked at him. He realises now that you looked at him, really looked, like you were waiting for something, and he grunted.

He calls the store. Clark picks up, says you didn't show for your shift last night. Or the night before. Didn't call in either. Clark sounds worried, but not in a panicked way. Just the clipped, pragmatic worry of a man already calculating how to cover the hours. 

Bobby tries to sound like he already knew, like he's been handling it. He's the kind of boyfriend who would obviously know that his girlfriend's been missing for three days.

He hangs up, stands in the kitchen and looks at the apartment.

Your coffee mug is still on the drying rack. Your jacket's on the hook by the door. Your shoes—the white ones, the ones you wear everywhere, the ones he's made fun of a hundred times—are sitting by the mat. You didn't leave, didn't pack anything. You didn't take your shoes or anything at all.

Bobby files a missing persons report that afternoon. 

The cops tell him to come in the following morning.

The detective's name is Moreno. He's got a desk in the back of the precinct, a cup of coffee that's been sitting there long enough to develop a skin, and an expression that Bobby doesn't like. There’s no hostility. It’s the other thing, the worse one. Interest. 

“So,” Moreno begins, flipping open a notebook. “Three days.”

“Yeah.”

“And you noticed this morning?”

Bobby's jaw tightens. “I thought she was working doubles.”

Moreno lifts his eyes briefly. “For three days.”

“It's happened before,” Bobby says a little defensively. 

“Has it?” Moreno writes something down. Slow, purposeful, the pen moving like he wants Bobby to watch it, to feel the weight of each letter being recorded. “Walk me through the timeline, Bobby. When's the last time you actually saw her?”

Bobby tells him. The doorway. The jacket. The don't wait up. The grunt.

Moreno nods. Writes. “And after that? What'd you do that night?”

“Watched TV. Went to bed.”

“Alone?”

Bobby stares at him. Jesus Christ. “Yeah. Alone.”

“Okay.” Moreno takes a sip of his dead coffee. Sets it down. “We talked to your neighbours, Bobby. Just routine. The couple in 4B, the Nguyens, mentioned hearing arguments. Through the walls. More than once, over the past few months.” He looks up from the notebook. “You want to tell me about that?”

Bobby's chest goes tight. “Couples argue.”

“Sure they do. What were you arguing about?”

“I don't—stuff. Normal stuff. Dishes. Schedules.”

“They said it sounded pretty heated sometimes,” Moreno remarks. “Mrs Nguyen used the word volatile.”

Bobby feels something cold move through his stomach. “I never touched her. If that's what you're—”

“Nobody said that,” Moreno's voice is easy, perfectly calm. The practised calm of a man who's done this before. “But I've got a missing woman who was last seen by her boyfriend, who didn't notice she was gone for three days, whose neighbours describe an argumentative relationship. You can see why I need to be thorough.”

Bobby can see alright. Bobby can see exactly what this looks like from the outside, and the cold thing in his stomach turns to ice because it looks bad. It looks like exactly what it isn't, and there's no way to explain the difference between I was a shitty, negligent boyfriend who took her for granted and I hurt her without sounding like he's making excuses for both or covering his ass.

“We'd like to take a look at your camera equipment,” Moreno says. “Your footage. You're a camera guy, right? Clark at the store mentioned you're always filming.”

Bobby nods. Numbly.

They take the camera. They take the tapes, too. 

Bobby sits on the couch in the apartment and stares at the empty shelf where the equipment used to be, and feels naked in a way that has nothing to do with clothes. The camera was the last layer between himself and the world. They've taken it, and now there's just Bobby, sitting in an apartment full of evidence of his own failures, waiting for strangers to watch his footage and decide what kind of man he is.

They call him back in four days later. Moreno's got a different look on his face now. Still interested, but muddied, thoughtful. Like he's found something he wasn't expecting.

“We reviewed the tapes, Bobby,” Moreno says.

Bobby waits.

“There's a lot of footage of her,” Moreno says carefully. Neutral. Watching Bobby's face the way you'd watch a surface for ripples. “A lot. Some of it she doesn't seem to know about. You filming her while she's sleeping. While she's cooking. While she's reading.”

“The light was good,” Bobby says automatically, the old excuse, and it sounds hollow even to him.

Moreno lets the silence sit. Then, “Bobby. I've got a missing woman. Her boyfriend has hours of footage of her, some of it taken without her apparent knowledge. Her neighbours describe fights. The boyfriend didn't notice she was gone for seventy-two hours.” He leans forward, knotting his fingers on the table. “You see the picture I'm looking at, right? It doesn’t look good. If you want to tell me anything, I can help you—”

“That's not—I never hurt her. I was—”

“What were you?”

And Bobby opens his mouth to snap back with something defensive, sharp. Bobby, who uses his tongue like a blade when he feels cornered, rears up to go, and what comes out instead is:

“I love her.”

Not loved. There’s no past tense here. This isn’t careful distancing of a man constructing an alibi. Present tense, raw, graceless, blurted out like a cough. Like something expelled from deep in his lungs against his will. His voice breaks on her, and Bobby’s eyes burn. 

Moreno is staring at him, and Bobby is sitting in a police precinct with his chain tangled and his crop top wrinkled, his earring catching the overhead fluorescent light. And he looks, in that moment, exactly like what he is: a twenty-something-year-old asshole who didn't know what he had until the world seemingly swallowed it whole.

“I love her,” he repeats, quieter now. Like now that the word is out, he can't stop saying it, like the dam has cracked and the only thing behind it was this. “I love her, and I was—I wasn't good to her, I know that, okay? I know what it looks like, but I didn't—I would never—”

Moreno watches him for a long time. The precinct hums in the background. Phones, footsteps, murmur of voices.

They let him go. No evidence. No body. They're able to confirm his alibi, and ten again.

There’s no proof of anything except the fact that Robert Franklin is a man who films the woman he loves while she sleeps because he can't bring himself to tell her she's beautiful while she's awake.

He goes to the store that night.

Not because he thinks he'll find anything. The cops already searched it. Half-heartedly, briefly, the way you search a place when you've already decided the boyfriend did it, and the crime scene is somewhere else. 

They walked through the showroom and poked around the loading dock. Went down to the storage level, shone flashlights between the flatpack bookshelves and the plastic-wrapped headboards, and found nothing. Because there's nothing to find. 

Bobby just knows that this is the last place you were. 

That your hands touched the furniture down here. The inventory sheets, the shelving units, the boxes of cabinet hardware and drawer pulls you organised on the night shifts he couldn't be bothered to stay for. Your fingerprints are on everything. The ghost of your routine is embedded in the layout of this room. The way the boxes are stacked, the system you developed for sorting shipments by vendor, and the little handwritten labels in your writing on the bins. 

Bobby stands in the middle of it, and he can feel you. He can feel you the way you feel someone in a room they just left—the displaced air, the warmth fading from a surface, the sense that if he turned around fast enough, he'd catch the edge of you disappearing around a corner.

He sits down on the concrete floor. Puts his back against the wall. The far one, behind the shelving unit full of cabinet hardware, the one that feels different from the others in a way he can't articulate. Cooler. Thinner somehow. 

He doesn't plan to talk. But at one point, the silence gets too much, and it just… comes out. 

“Hey, baby. It's Bobby.”

His voice sounds strange in the empty room. Too loud, too small. Bouncing off the concrete and the flatpacks and coming back to him slightly changed, echoed.

“I don't know if you can hear me. I don't—this is stupid. This is really fucking stupid. Obviously, you can’t hear me because you’re not here. But I just—” He stops. Presses the back of his head against the wall. Stares at the ceiling. “The cops think I did something to you. They looked at me like—” He swallows. “I don't care about that. I don't care what they think. I just need you to know I'm looking. Okay? I'm looking, baby. I'm not gonna stop.”

The draft brushes against his palm. Cool. Steady. Like a pulse. 

He comes back the next night. And the next. And the next.

It becomes the only thing that makes sense. The apartment is a museum of his failures. Every unwashed dish, every unanswered question, every space where your things are slowly being buried under his carelessness. 

But the store is different. The store is where you were. The last place your body occupied space. Sitting in it feels like sitting in the shallow end of your absence rather than drowning in the deep. He can think down here. He can talk. He can say the things he should've said when you were standing in the doorway with your keys in your hand and your heart in your eyes, and he was looking at the TV.

Hey baby. It's me. Found one of your socks behind the dryer today. The fuzzy ones. I put it on the dresser. Just in case.

I keep thinking about Thanksgiving. When you burned the rolls, and I said, "guess we're going to my mom's next year", and you laughed, but you weren't really laughing. You were hurt. I knew, and I didn't fix it.

I'm sorry about the rolls. They were good. They were a little burnt, but they were good. You made them, and I should've eaten every single one.

Bobby pauses. Picks at the concrete with his thumbnail. The storage level smells like particleboard and cardboard. Somewhere deep in the room, he can feel that draft again. That impossible nowhere-breeze he still hasn’t found a source of.

I was thinking about that morning. In the kitchen. You were making breakfast, and you turned around with a spatula and asked if I wanted toast, and the light was behind you, and I—I felt this thing. This huge thing. Like my chest was going to crack open. And I said, "sure." I said SURE. You were standing there in my kitchen looking like that, and I felt the biggest thing I've ever felt, and I said sure and loaded film into my camera like it was nothing.

It wasn't nothing. It was everything. I just didn't know how to—I couldn't—

Bobby stops. Presses the heels of his hands into his eyes.

I was so scared you'd see how much I needed you and you'd leave. So I made you leave by not letting you see. That's the dumbest shits anyone's ever done. Baby. I'm so stupid.

He comes back every night. Even when there are no words. Even when he just sits with his hand on the wall and his eyes closed, breathing in the sawdust and the nothing-draft, feeling the concrete thrum against his palm like a second heartbeat.

No leads. No calls. No breaks in the case because there's no sightings, no signs of a break in, nothing. Eyes follow him around town, full of questions and suspicion. There's those who genuinely believe he did something to you. It's stupid, so fucking stupid. He's many thins, but he would never—

Except he did. He did hurt you. Just not in the way these people think.

So Bobby keeps coming because this room is the last place you were. And as long as he keeps sitting in it, as long as he keeps talking to the walls, you're not gone. 

You're just somewhere he hasn’t found you yet.

Month two.

The news spreads the way news does in a place like Santa Clara.

A slow seep through the neighbourhood, through the strip mall. The regulars who used to come to Clark's store for dining sets and bed frames and the occasional impulse-buy end table. A girl went missing. She worked there. The police questioned her boyfriend. No arrests, but you know.

People stop coming.

Not all at once. But the thin trickle becomes a drought. 

The regulars find reasons not to visit. Other stores, other errands, a sudden preference for the furniture place on Stevens Creek that doesn't have a missing-person case attached to it.

The showroom gets quieter. The displays gather a fine layer of dust that Clark used to wipe down every morning, and now he only gets to it every other day, then every third day, then whenever he remembers. Which is less and less because Clark is a man watching his business die and his marriage fracture. 

He can feel both things slipping through his fingers at the same speed, and the bourbon is the only thing that makes the slippage feel like someone else's problem.

So Clark hires Kat. 

Not because he needs a full-time replacement. Frankly, customer traffic no longer justifies it, but the showroom needs a body in it. A presence. Someone to make the store look like a place where things are still happening. Kat is bright and cheap, and she doesn't ask about the missing girl, at least not at first, and Clark is grateful for that.

Bobby notices her the first time he comes in for his nightly visit to the basement. 

She's behind the register, leaning against the counter with a pen behind her ear, doing something with a stack of delivery receipts. Radio plays something tuneful from a boombox she's brought from home. Dark hair. Quick smile. She looks up when the door chimes and gives him that particular once-over that Bobby used to live for. The slow sweep, the lingering, the way women's eyes always catch on the chain, the earring, the slice of toned stomach under the crop top. 

She says, “We're closed.”

“I know. I'm not shopping.”

She watches him walk past the display couches and the dining sets, then down the stairs, all with undisguised curiosity. Bobby doesn't turn around.

The second time, she asks.

“You're the boyfriend, right? Of the girl who—” She catches herself. Has the decency to look uncomfortable. “Sorry. Clark mentioned it.”

“Yeah.”

“I'm Kat,” she says. “I'm covering her shifts.”

“I know.”

Bobby keeps walking. Past the model bedrooms with their fake pillows and fake lamps, down the stairs, into the storage level where the real furniture waits in boxes. He sits on the floor. Presses his palm to the wall.

Hey baby. It's me again.

That night, back in the apartment, Bobby can't sleep. He lies on his side of the bed with his hand on your side and stares at the ceiling. The silence is so complete it has a texture, thick and too heavy. He gets up. Goes to the living room. Stands in front of the shelf where the cops put the tapes back, lined up in a neat row they were never in before.

He picks one up. Turns it over in his hands. The label is in his handwriting. A date, nothing else.

He tells himself he's looking for clues. That's the reason he gives himself as he threads the tape into the camera, plugs it into the TV, and sits on the floor with the remote in his hand.

The apartment is dark except for the blue wash of the screen. He's going to watch the footage with detective's eyes, with Moreno's eyes, looking for something everyone missed: a person in the background, a car that didn't belong, a moment where your face changed because you knew something was coming. He's going to be useful. He's going to be the kind of boyfriend who solves this.

And there you are. In the kitchen. In the morning light. Turning around with a spatula in your hand, your hair messy from sleep, one of his t-shirts hanging off your shoulder. You're saying something—he can't hear it over the lump in his throat, but he can read your lips, do you want toast—and the light is behind you, exactly the way he remembered. 

You're so beautiful, so real and so present on this tape that for a second Bobby forgets. For one perfect, idiot second, his body forgets you're gone and his hand almost lifts to touch the screen. 

Then the moment passes and you're still in the TV and he's still on the floor and the distance between those two things is the rest of his life.

He watches everything. All of it. Hours. The sleeping footage that made Moreno look at him like that. Bobby sees it now, sees what it looks like from the outside, and he also sees what it actually was: a man so stunned by the existence of this person in his bed that he needed the camera between them to survive it. 

You in the kitchen. You reading on the couch with your feet tucked under you, turning pages with one hand, the other hand resting on Bobby's thigh without thinking about it. He filmed that too, the hand, just the hand. Five minutes of your fingers against his jeans because he couldn't say you touching me is the best thing in my life, so Bobby recorded it instead. You at the store, sorting inventory, your lips moving along to the radio, and you catch the camera, and your face does that thing—the mock-exasperated smile, the Bobby, stop that you never really meant—and your eyes are warm. 

Your eyes are so fucking warm. Alive.

He watches until the tapes run out, and then Bobby rewinds them and watches again. He can't help it. The apartment fills with the sound of you. Your voice, your laugh, the particular way you said his name, Bobby, half-scolding and half-tender. For a few hours, the silence has a crack in it and something warm leaks through.

He starts watching them every night. Before the store, after the store, sometimes both. It becomes a ritual. Some sick twin devotions, the basement and the tapes, the wall and the screen, one hand pressed to concrete and the other pressing play.

Month three.

Kat starts leaving coffee on the counter for him. 

It's hot, and it's there every night when he walks in, balanced on the edge of the register next to a ceramic lamp that's been on display since before you vanished. 

She doesn't make a thing of it. Doesn't say I made this for you, or I thought you might want. It's just there. An object in his path. Bobby takes it because refusing would require a conversation he doesn't have the energy for.

She starts sitting on the stairs when he's in the basement. Not coming all the way down, just perching on the third step, legs crossed, chin in her hand, talking to him through the open stairwell. 

She tells him about her day. About the customers, mainly. The couple who spent three hours testing every sofa in the showroom and then bought a lamp, the woman who wanted to return a bed frame she'd clearly had for two years, and some guy who asked if they sold waterbeds. Clark apparently almost threw him out. She's funny, in a way that's different from you. Louder, broader, more direct. 

You were a scalpel. Kat's a blunt instrument, and right now Bobby is so hollowed out that even blunt force registers as contact.

He doesn't laugh. He doesn't encourage her. But he stops telling her to go away, and Kat reads that correctly as the only invitation Bobby knows how to extend right now.

It's the tapes that start to bother him first.

Not anything he can really name at first. It's more like a feeling. Particular unease of looking at something familiar and sensing, at the periphery, that it's shifted. He's watching the kitchen footage—the toast morning, his favourite, the one he's rewound so many times the tracking wobbles at the edges—and something feels off. Bobby stops the tape. Rewinds. Watches again.

You turn around with the spatula. The light is behind you. You say do you want toast. Everything is exactly the same.

Except your face.

Bobby leans closer to the screen. Squints. Your face is… fine. It's your face. Your eyes, your mouth, the way your hair falls. It's you. But there's… something. Some flicker of wrongness so faint it's less than a shadow. Like the difference between a photograph and a photocopy of a photograph. The information is all there. It's just one generation removed from real.

He tells himself it's the tape. Old footage, cheap equipment, the kind of VHS degradation that happens when you rewind the same section a hundred times. He tells himself it's his eyes, his exhaustion, the fact that he's watching the same clips at two in the morning in a dark apartment obsessively. 

His brain is doing what brains do when they're tired and desperate: finding patterns in the static.

He believes it. For a while. He presses play.

One night, Kat is quiet for longer than usual. Bobby can feel her watching him from the stairs, her chin on her knees, the stairwell light behind her making her silhouette sharp.

“You loved her a lot, huh,” she says. Soft. Not a question.

Bobby goes rigid. His hand is flat on the wall. The draft tickles against his palm.

He turns his head. Looks at her. And whatever's on his face, he knows it’s not warm. It's the Bobby that bites, the one who gets mean, and Kat sees it happen, feels the temperature drop. The wall goes up behind his expression like a bulkhead slamming shut.

“I still love her,” he says, cold and flat. Corrective. Present tense.

He turns back to the wall. Kat is quiet for a long time. Then she gets up and goes back upstairs, and Bobby hears her footsteps cross the showroom floor above him. He closes his eyes, pressing his forehead to the concrete. He hates himself for being cruel to one more person who didn't deserve it or ask him but did you do it?

But he can't— 

He can't let her use the past tense. He can't let anyone use the past tense. Because that means it's over, and it's not over. It's not. You're somewhere, he can feel it. 

Bobby is a man sitting on a concrete floor talking to nobody, and the only woman who ever mattered to him is gone, and the last thing he gave her was a fucking grunt.

He can't live in that version. He won't.

Month four.

Bobby starts going through the inventory records. 

Your handwriting is everywhere. The logs, the labels on the bins, the sticky notes on the shelving units, reminding Clark which shipments need to go out first. He sits in the storage level with the binder in his lap and traces your letters with his fingertip. He can hear your voice in the loops and slants. The way you wrote like you talked, quick and slightly messy, always abbreviating things so he had to ask you to translate.

The tapes are getting worse.

He can't deny it anymore. The wrongness he felt at month three has deepened into something visible, a decay he doesn't need to squint to see. 

Your face has lost something in the kitchen footage. Nothing he could point to, nothing a stranger who'd never met you would notice. But Bobby has watched this clip a thousand times, and he knows the terrain of your face the way a sailor knows coastline.

Something has shifted. 

Your eyes are the right colour, but the light behind them is dimmer, muted, like watching a candle through frosted glass. Your mouth moves and the words come out (do you want toast), but there's a fraction-of-a-second delay. The audio arriving just a breath after the lips, and it gives your voice a quality that makes the hair on Bobby's arms stand up. A dubbing. A sense that someone else is speaking through you, almost perfectly synchronised but not quite. 

He goes through the other tapes. One by one. Methodical. The sleeping footage first. And you're there, you're sleeping, but the quality of your stillness is wrong. Too still. A person breathing doesn't look like that, doesn't have that uncanny smoothness, that mannequin-serenity. 

The footage of you at the store next. Sorting inventory, lips moving to the radio is the worst affected so far. Your hands look right, but they move in a way that's almost, almost correct. The way a marionette's hands move when the puppeteer is very good. Bobby watches your fingers sort through drawer pulls and cabinet hardware, and he knows that those are not the hands that touched him.

He doesn't tell anyone. Who the hell would he even tell? Moreno? Hey, detective, the girl on my tapes is turning into something else? Yeah, same one that went missing and everyone thinks I secretly killed! His mom? Terrence? They already think he's losing it. Or, worse, they would think he’s high again.

They already use that voice with him now. The careful tone people use when they're managing a dangerous animal. This would be the thing that tips it, the thing that sends Bobby from grieving boyfriend to guy who cracked.

He starts making a list of his failures instead. 

An erosion in reverse. Every day, some new memory surfaces, a moment he discarded when it happened and now can't stop replaying. Each one is worse than the last because each one is a place where he had a choice and chose wrong and didn't even realise it. Or maybe he did. And that’s worse.

The night you came home excited about something—a movie, a book, something a friend said, he can't even remember what it was, and that fact alone makes him want to put his fist through drywall—and you'd been lit up, talking fast, gesturing, and he'd been reviewing footage on the couch.

He'd said uh-huh without looking up. Not even once. Not once during your entire story did he lift his eyes from the viewfinder. You trailed off mid-sentence and went quiet, and Bobby hadn't looked up then either.

He tries to find that moment on tape. He knows he was filming that night. The camera was always running, always capturing, the viewfinder his permanent excuse for not being present. He scrubs through the footage looking for it. Looking for your face lit up. Looking for the moment you dimmed.

He finds the timestamp. And what Bobby sees makes his stomach drop.

You're sitting on the couch. He can tell it's you by the posture, the clothes, the way you're tucked into the corner cushion with your legs folded. But your face. Your face is… smeared. Like a thumbprint pressed across wet paint. The features are there, technically. But only technically. Eyes, mouth, nose. But they've lost their arrangement, their specificity.

The uniqueness that makes a face your face instead of just a face. 

Bobby is looking at you, and he can’t tell what you look like. He’s lived with you, slept beside you, fucked you in every spot in your shared apartment, filmed you obsessively for months, and yet he’s looking at a tape from four months ago, and he can’t reconstruct you.

The audio is worse. Your voice—the one he knows better than his own, the one that said his name like a bell, half-scolding and half-tender—is distorted.

Vowels flattened, consonants dissolved. That familiar melody of your speech now reduced to a low warbling tone that doesn't sound like language anymore. It sounds like a recording of a recording of a recording. Each new generation losing fidelity, losing you, until what's left is just the shape of where a voice used to be.

Bobby ejects the tape. His hands are shaking so hard he almost drops it. He puts it back on the shelf and sits on the couch in the dark and doesn't move for an hour.

He sits with the inventory binder the next night and reads your handwriting and says to the wall:

Something's happening to you, baby. I can't—I don't know how to explain it. But something's happening to the tapes, and I think it means something's happening to you. I need you to hold on. Okay? I need you to hold on because I'm still here, and I'm not leaving. I need you to still be you when I find you.

I think I got scared of how much I needed you. So I stopped letting myself need you. And that's not an excuse. I know that's not an excuse.

The truth is, I wanted to be there so much that it was destroying me. I wanted you so much it made me fucking mean. I loved you in a way I couldn't control, and I've always been an idiot who quits everything. Who gives up when things get too big and scary. You were the one thing that made my hands shake, and I hated it, and I needed it. I needed you because you saw me. I didn't know how to need something without resenting it.

So I resented you. For making me believe in myself. For making me need something other than the weed. And I showed it by turning away and turning away and turning away until you thought I didn't feel anything at all, when the reality is I felt everything. I felt too much. I've always felt too much, and I've never once known what to do about it except hide behind the camera and make a dumb joke and let the moment pass.

He pauses. Slams the binder shut. Runs his hand over the cover where your coffee ring stains the cardboard.

I should've told you about the toast morning. The spatula. The light behind you. I should've put the camera down and told you right then.

I should've told you every morning.

Baby. I can still see your handwriting. I need to—I need that to mean you're still somewhere. That this is just the tapes. That the tapes are old and I'm tired and you're fine, wherever you are, you're fine and you look like you and you sound like you and when I find you I'll know your face.

Month five.

Kat touches his arm.

It happens on a Wednesday. She's handing him the coffee, and her fingers brush his wrist and stay there. A half-second too long. Warm. Intentional.

Bobby stares at her hand. Looks at her. She doesn't look away.

“You know,” she says cautiously, “you don't have to sit down there alone every night. You could stay up here. Sit on one of the display couches. They're actually pretty comfortable for fake living rooms.” She smiles. Not the interested once-over from the first night. Softer now, more careful.

Bobby takes the coffee. Goes downstairs.

His pager buzzes against his hip later that night. He unclips it, tilts it toward the light. Kat's number. She must've pulled it from the staff contact sheet Clark keeps.

He looks at the little green screen for a long time. Clips the pager back to his belt. Presses his forehead to the wall.

That night, at home, he puts in the toast tape. It's become a test now, a compulsion. He checks the way you'd check a wound, needing to see if it's gotten worse, even though looking makes it worse too. He sits on the floor in front of the TV and watches the kitchen footage load.

The spatula is there. The counter. The window with the morning light. The t-shirt hanging off one shoulder. Everything in the frame is crisp, real, and correctly rendered.

Except there's no one holding the spatula.

Bobby's breath hitches. He leans forward, hands shaking. Rewinds. Plays it again.

The spatula lifts. Turns. The t-shirt shifts on a shoulder that isn't there. Or is there, maybe, but wrong. A smudge of colour where a body should be, a heat-shimmer distortion where your outline used to sit. The light comes through the window and falls on the kitchen counter and on the empty space where you stood, and there is something in that space.

Not nothing, or blank tape, but a presence that has no edges, no features, no face. A blur. A smear. The visual equivalent of a word on the tip of your tongue that won't come.

The audio says — — toast — and then dissolves into a sound that Bobby can only describe as the noise a voice makes when it's being pulled apart from the inside. Each syllable stretches thinner and thinner until it snaps, and what's left is a low, sustained hum that sounds like buzzing lights in an empty hallway.

Bobby presses stop. Ejects the tape.

He goes to the shelf. Pulls another. The one where you're reading on the couch, your hand on his thigh. He puts it in.

Your hand is gone. His thigh is there. Bobby can see his own jeans, the denim folded at the knee. That specific wear pattern on the left leg. But the hand that used to rest on it has dissolved into a faded wash, a blurry disturbance on the surface of the image, like someone pressed their palm to a fogged window and then the fog closed over the print.

He puts in another. The store footage. You sorting inventory.

The bins are being sorted by no one. Cabinet hardware moves through the air. Drawer pulls lift and settle into containers by themselves, organised by a system invented by a person the tape can no longer render. The radio plays in the recording. Bobby can hear the music. Unchanged. But the voice that used to sing along to it is gone. Replaced by a low, pulsing tone that rises and falls in a pattern that almost, almost resembles the melody you used to hum, if he listens hard enough, if Bobby presses his ear to the speaker and closes his eyes and believes—

He can't. He can't believe it hard enough. The tape runs, and the inventory sorts itself. The radio plays somewhere underneath it all in a frequency that used to be your voice.

Bobby puts every tape in, one by one. Every single one. And on every single one, you’re fading. The early tapes—the oldest ones, the ones from before the store, from the first months—are the worst. 

On those, you’re gone entirely. The frame exists, as does the light. But the space you occupied is smooth and empty, the image healing the wound of your absence like skin closing over a wound.

Reality itself seems to be deciding you were never there and quietly, methodically, is editing you out.

On the very last tape he checks, the most recent, he can still see you. Barely. A silhouette that won't resolve. A shape in the doorway that could be a person or could be a trick of the light. He pauses the tape and stares at the shape, and it looks like you the way a cloud looks like a face. If you want it to, if you squint hard enough and ignore the parts that don't match.

Bobby sits on the floor, holding the remote, staring at the paused frame. He understands, with a certainty that bypasses logic and settles directly into his bones, that you’re being erased. Not just from his life. Not just from the apartment, the store, or the neighbourhood that forgot you. From reality. From any evidence that you existed at all.

The tapes were his proof. Not for Moreno, or the cops, but for himself. Proof that you were real. That the toast morning happened. That your hand rested on his thigh. Love, in all its messy, imperfect shape between you, was real. That you sang along to the radio and burned rolls at Thanksgiving. That you stood in doorways waiting for him to look up. For once in his life, to just look up and see you. 

He filmed you because he couldn't tell you he loved you, and thought the films would be enough. They were going to be the evidence he'd have forever, the record of what he felt even when he couldn't say it aloud.

And now even that’s being taken.

He doesn't go to the store that night. He goes straight to the basement and puts his whole body against the wall. Not just his hand. His whole body, chest, cheek and palms flat against the concrete. Maybe he’s going insane, finally, properly insane, but he talks until his voice gives out.

Don't go. Whatever's happening, whatever this is—please. Don't go. I know I didn't earn you. I know I don't get to ask you to stay when I didn't give you a reason to stay. But I’m asking. I'm begging. Please.

I can barely remember your face, baby.

I looked at the tapes, and you're not—you're going away. You're going away, and I can't stop it. The last version of your face I have in my head is from the doorway, the night you left, and I didn't even LOOK at it. I fucking grunted. You were looking at me, and I was looking at the TV. Now your face is disappearing from my own tapes, and the last real look I had at you I wasted on a GRUNT.

Baby. Please don't make me forget what you look like.

The wall breathes against him. The draft. The nowhere-breeze, cooler than the room, steady, almost rhythmic. Like breathing. Like something on the other side pressing back, watching him.

Bobby lifts his head but he's alone down here.

He stays until morning anyway.

Month six.

The apartment is starting to forget you.

Your shampoo ran out first. Bobby couldn't bring himself to buy more, so the shower shelf has a gap now.

Your magazines are buried under his mail, his camera equipment that's migrated back to every flat surface because there's nobody to complain about it. The coffee mug—your mug, the one on the drying rack—he put it in the cabinet. High shelf. Behind his. He can't see it when he opens the door, but he knows it's there. 

The tapes are blank.

Completely blank. Clean, smooth, unrecorded type of blank. As if the camera was never pointed at anything, as if the record button was never pressed. Hours and hours of footage simply un-happened. 

Bobby put in the toast tape last week, and what played was thirty minutes of soft grey nothing. The gentle hiss of virgin magnetic tape, the sound of a medium that has never held information. He put it in the camera, connected it to the TV, and watched nothing. Rewound it. Watched nothing again, ejected it, held it in his hands, turned it over and read his own handwriting on the label. 

The date, just the date. The label is the only proof left that something was once on this tape, because the tape itself has forgotten.

All of them. Every single one. He checked them all, one after another, on a Saturday afternoon with the curtains drawn. By the time Bobby reached the last one, he wasn't even surprised. Just hollow. The shelves are full of labelled cassettes that now contain nothing.

A library of blanks. An archive of absence.

He has no pictures of you. 

He realises this with a physical lurch, sitting on the floor surrounded by dead tapes. He has no pictures of you. 

Bobby the camera guy, Bobby who filmed everything, Bobby who pointed the lens at you while you slept because he couldn't survive the sight of you without a barrier, and somehow, he has no proof you exist. The tapes are blank. He never took photographs because the camera was always rolling. And the only image of your face he has left is the one in his head, and that one is fading too. 

Just the ordinary human erosion. The way memory smooths out detail over time. Six months of absence turns a face into an impression, an atmosphere, a feeling-where-a-face-used-to-be.

He remembers your eyes. He thinks. He remembers warmth, colour, the way they changed in kitchen light, and the blue wash of the TV at midnight. But he doesn't remember their exact shape. Doesn't remember if the left one was slightly different from the right. 

The details are blurry; the tapes can't tell him anymore, and no one else can, either. You’re being unmade—from the record, from the world, from his own goddamn memory—and Bobby is the man who was supposed to preserve you, who pointed a camera at you for years, and he couldn't even do that right.

He still goes to the store. Every night. Without fail. 

Even when it rains, or when he's sick, or when his hands shake on the steering wheel, driving down at eleven PM. He sits on the floor, and he talks. Sometimes he brings the coffee, your order, and a paper cup from the place on El Camino that makes it the way you like best.

Bobby sets it on the concrete beside him like a place setting at a table for two, and it goes cold while he talks. Eventually, he pours it out in the utility sink by the loading dock, rinses the cup and drives home.

It's getting harder to believe.

He can feel it. 

Faith eroding the way your shampoo scent eroded from the pillow, the way you eroded from the tapes, gradually, then suddenly. Six months. People don't come back after six months. The cops have functionally closed the case. 

Bobby's mom called and talked around the subject for forty minutes before finally saying honey, maybe it's time to— and Bobby hung up on her. His buddy Terrence sat him down at a bar and said, awkwardly, carefully, the way everyone talks to Bobby now, man, I know you don't want to hear this, but— and Bobby walked out before he could finish the sentence.

He knows what they're going to say. He knows because he's been saying it to himself at three in the morning, lying on his side of the bed with his hand on the cold spot you should be, a thought looping in his brain: she's not coming back. She's not coming back.

But Bobby goes to the store. And he sits on the floor. He puts his hand on the wall. The draft is still there—that impossible nowhere-breeze, cool against his palm—and it feels like breathing. Bobby presses his whole body against the concrete.

This space is the last thing that still holds you. The tapes gave you up. The apartment gave you up. The neighbourhood, the cops, his friends, his mother, everyone has let go. Bobby presses himself against the wall every night because this is the one place in the world that still has you in it. The last surface that carries your imprint, and he’ll not leave it. 

He will not let the last proof of you go.

Bobby thinks about who he was seven months ago, and the contempt is so total it's almost cleansing. 

A twenty-something-year-old asshole in a crop top who thought he was too cool to say I love you, who hid behind a camera lens because looking at things through glass was easier than looking at them with his bare, stupid, cowardly eyes.

He had a girl who made him breakfast and stayed up waiting for him. Who asked do you even want to be here anymore and answered her with don't be dramatic because the truth was too enormous and too terrifying to fit through his teeth.

The camera was supposed to be the thing that kept you. The proof, the record, the insurance policy against loss. He filmed you because he couldn't hold you, and now the film is empty. His arms are empty too, and the only thing left is a dusty basement with a strange wall and a man who doesn't deserve the comfort of it.

Robert Franklin, who quit everything, who let every good thing in his life rot through neglect and cowardice—Robert Franklin refuses to quit this. 

This is the one thing he will hold onto with both hands. Because if he lets go, he has to look at who he is without it, and that person has nothing. That someone is an idiot with a camera and a crop top sitting in an empty apartment full of blank tapes, where he ground something beautiful down to dust because he was too chickenshit to be soft.

So he goes. Every night. He goes.

Month seven.

Clark is drunk.

Bobby can tell before he's through the door. 

The showroom lights are on, but the sign is flipped to CLOSED, and the radio's playing louder than usual from somewhere in the back. When Bobby makes his way past the dining displays, he finds Clark sitting in the leather recliner. The expensive floor model, the one that's been here since the store opened, with a bottle of Jim Beam wedged between his thigh and that look on his face. 

The one Bobby sees in the mirror. The look of a man whose life is falling apart.

“Bobby.” Flat. Not unfriendly. Voice of a man who's been drinking past sloppy and into something cold and brittle on the other side. “Right on time.”

“Clark.” Bobby eyes the bottle. “Where's Kat?”

“Sent her home early.” Clark takes a long, gulping drink. He's still wearing his work shirt, that same button-down he always wears, but it's untucked and the collar's stained. He looks like he's been in that recliner for a while. “Sit down.”

“I'm going downstairs.”

“No.” Another wet gulp. His eyes are red but steady. “You're not. That's what I need to talk to you about.”

Bobby stops.

“Linda kicked me out,” Clark says conversationally. The way he'd talk about lumber prices or a late shipment. He gestures around the showroom with the bottle. “So I'll be staying here. Back office. Maybe downstairs, if I can clear space between the Scandinavian imports.” The joke almost lands. Almost. “Which means I need the room, Bobby. All of it.”

“You're—what?”

“I'm saying you can't come here anymore.”

The words land like a slap. Bobby's hand tightens on the strap of his camera bag.

“Clark—”

“Seven months.” 

And there it is. That thing that happens when Clark drinks, when the bourbon strips away the politeness and the it's not my place and the careful middle-aged-man diplomacy, and what's left is just the raw compressed anger of a man who's been swallowing his own resentment for months.

Clark is a man who holds everything down until the whiskey lifts the lid and whatever's underneath comes out scalding.

“Seven months of you in my basement. Seven months of—do you know what's happened to this place since your girlfriend disappeared? Do you? Because I do. I watch it every day. I watch the customers not come in. I watch the phone not ring. I watch the neighbourhood look at my store like it's a goddamn crime scene and take their money to Stevens Creek because nobody wants to buy a dining set from the place where a girl vanished.” Clark's voice is rising, a deep rumbling anger spilling outwards. “I built this store. And now I'm sleeping in it because my ungrateful wife thinks I'm a failure and my customers think I'm cursed and the only person who walks through my door every night is you, Bobby, sitting on my floor, talking to my wall—”

“That's not my fault —”

“She's not down there.” Clark slams the bottle on the end table. It cracks the mahogany finish, and he doesn't notice or doesn't care. “She's not in the walls, or the ceiling or the goddamn floor, son. She's not inside a goddamn flatpack bookshelf.”

Bobby sucks in a breath. “You don't know that. Nobody does.”

“Yeah, I do.” 

Clark leans forward. Red-eyed. Steady. And the thing he's been holding between his teeth for months comes out. The ugly thing that isn't about Bobby at all, it's about Clark, about a store that was failing before you ever disappeared and a marriage that was cracking before the customers stopped coming.

A man who needs someone to blame because the alternative is looking in the mirror and seeing his own fingerprints on everything that's broken. And right now, tonight, drunk and newly homeless and sitting in a recliner in a showroom full of furniture nobody's buying, Clark has found his someone.

“She's either dead,” Clark says, and the word just hangs there, settling on Bobby's skin like hot oil spilling over— “or she left you. And either way, son. Either way. You need to stop. Because I can't have you down there anymore. I can't have this—this haunting—attached to my store. I'm trying to save what's left, and you sitting in my basement every night is—”

He stops himself. A crack appears in Clark’s anger, a fissure where the sober Clark underneath can see what the drunk Clark is doing. Using Bobby's grief to deflect from his own failure. Blaming a missing girl for a business that was haemorrhaging money long before she vanished, for a wife who kicked him out because Clark worked sixty-hour weeks and never once asked how her day was.

Clark knows. Underneath the bourbon, he knows. And the knowing makes his face twist with both sadness and fury.

“Bobby.” His voice changes. Drops. The anger drains out of it like water from a cracked glass, leaving only the exhaustion underneath. Clark rubs his eyes with one hand, and suddenly, he looks old. Older than he is, tired in a way that has nothing to do with the hour. “I didn't—that came out wrong. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it like that.”

Bobby doesn't hear him.

Because Bobby is already moving. Past the display couches and the model bedrooms with their fake pillows and fake lives. He shoulder clips the corner of a dining table hard enough to shift it on the showroom floor, and the door chimes behind him when he rips it open.

The night air hits him, and he's in the parking lot, his hands are on his knees, and he's breathing in short, ragged, tearing bursts that feel like they're coming from somewhere below his lungs. 

Somewhere that's been sealed shut for seven months and has just been cracked open with the words she's either dead or she left you.

Dead or she left you.

Dead.

Or she left you.

He can't fucking breathe. He can't—the air is right there. Santa Clara night air, warm and full of eucalyptus and car exhaust, but he can't get it into his lungs. Because Clark said dead, and that word is a door Bobby has refused to open for seven months, and now it's open, it's wide fucking open. 

And behind it is a version of reality where you’re in the ground somewhere and the last thing he ever said to you was a grunt and your last memory of him is the back of his head and the blue light of the television and the sound of a man who couldn't be bothered to look up.

And the tapes are blank. And your face is gone. And there is no record anywhere in the world that you existed except the label on a cassette in Bobby's handwriting and in a basement he's just been locked out of.

“Bobby. Bobby, wait—”

Kat. Coming around the side of the building, car keys in her hand. She didn't go home. She was sitting in her car, headlights off, engine off, just sitting there, and she's been doing that, he knows she's been doing that, waiting for him, watching the door. And he's never said anything because acknowledging it would mean acknowledging everything it implies.

“Bobby, hey, stop, are you okay? I heard him through the door, what did he—”

Bobby straightens up. Pivots toward her. And he knows—somewhere in the functioning part of his brain, in the part that isn't currently on fire—that she doesn't deserve what’s coming. She's been nothing but kind.

Coffee on counters, stairs and parking lots and pager numbers he never called back. She never once asked for anything in return. She’s a good person standing in a parking lot trying to help a man who’s bleeding out from a wound she didn't inflict.

But the thing inside Bobby right now is not rational. It's not kind. It's the wounded animal, the cornered dog, the part of Robert Franklin that has always turned his pain into teeth and aimed them at whoever's closest because the alternative is feeling it. And he…

He can't feel it; if he feels it right now, he’ll come apart on this asphalt, and he doesn't know if he'll come back together again.

“Don't do that. Don't chase me. Don't wait in the parking lot. Don't leave me coffee. Don't—” His voice cracks, and he hates it. Hates the sound of himself breaking in front of her. Another woman who's being kind to him, and he's going to ruin it with his inability to do anything with tenderness except flinch from it. “I'm not going to fuck you, Kat. Alright? Is that what you need to hear? My girl is missing. The girl I love is fucking missing, and I don't know where she is, and I can't—I can't do this. Whatever you think this is going to become. I can't.”

He presses the heel of his hand into his eye. Hard. Grinding the tears back because Bobby doesn't cry in front of people. Even though he's been doing it alone on concrete for seven months, even though the irony—Bobby Franklin pushing away the person trying to be there for him while grieving the person he pushed away by not being there—is so perfect and so cruel it feels engineered. Like the universe is holding up a mirror and saying see? You're doing it again. You learned nothing, idiot.

He knows. He knows he's doing it again. He can't stop doing it.

“I can't,” he rasps. Quiet, broken. “I'm sorry.”

Kat stands still. Her keys dangle from one finger, catching the orange glow of the streetlight. She doesn't step back. Doesn't cry or get angry or tell him to go fuck himself, though she definitely should. Bobby almost wishes she would because it would give him someone to push against.

The tapes are blank, and your face is a smear. Reality is closing over the hole you left like water closing over a stone, and soon there’ll be no evidence you were ever here at all except a man in a parking lot who can't stop saying your name in the present tense.

Kat shifts her keys to her other hand. Takes one step closer. Not touching. Just closer.

She looks at him, and she says, quietly, softly, “I don't need you to love me, Bobby.”

Quiet. Simple. Like she's telling him the time.

Bobby's mouth opens. Closes. His hand drops from his face. The parking lot is quiet. Only the buzzing streetlight fills the silence. 

He looks at her, and he looks wrecked, he knows. Absolutely wrecked, hollowed out and scraped clean from last seven months, standing in a place where the only options are forward into something he's not ready for or backwards into a basement he's just been locked out of, and he doesn't say yes.

But he doesn't walk away, either.

Because the Backrooms aren't empty. You learn that fast. There are sounds in the deeper hallways, wet dragging things, clicking, something that might be breathing if breathing sounded like it was coming from a throat that was never designed for air.

The first time you hear it (really hear it, close, too close) you freeze, and Better Bobby is already moving. He steps in front of you. Puts his body between you and the sound without hesitation, without even breaking his sentence, one arm reaching back to keep you behind him. His hand finds your wrist and holds it. Firm. Certain.

"Stay behind me, baby. I got you."

And he does. He always does.

He knows which hallways to avoid, which doors not to open, what corners to take wide. He navigates this place like it's his, and maybe it is, and you try not to think about what that means.

When something skitters in the walls at night (at what passes for night, when he dims the lights in whatever room he's chosen and curls around you like a barricade) he doesn't flinch. Just pulls you closer, mouth against your temple, murmuring you're okay, I'm here, nothing's getting past me. And nothing does.

Real Bobby wouldn't even stay for a night shift.

That thought makes your chest hurt every time. You try to push it away but Better Bobby's already noticed the expression on your face. He notices everything, because he's always watching you with that soft, focused attention that reminds you of how real Bobby used to be behind the camera. Seeing things before they happen. Anticipating you.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Liar." But he says it gently. Kisses your forehead. Doesn't push.

And you start asking questions. Carefully at first, then less so.

How did you get here?

"Same way you did, baby. Found a way in."

But when? How long have you been here?

"Long enough to know how to keep you safe. Isn't that what matters?"

That's not an answer.

"Sure it is." That smile. The one that used to make your chest ache when real Bobby aimed it at you across a room. "You're just not hearing what you want to hear. Ask me something else."

What are you?

"Bobby."

You're not Bobby.

"I'm Better Bobby." He says it like it's obvious, like you're being a little slow, and there's even a flash of that real-Bobby sharpness in it, that dry teasing edge, and it's so perfectly him that it makes your throat close. "I'm the one who stays, baby. That's all you need to know."

But where did you come from?

"Where did you come from? Where does anyone come from?" He tilts his head at you the way real Bobby does (did) when you said something he found cute. "You're going in circles, you know that?"

And you are. That's the thing. Every question leads back to the same place: I'm here, I love you, stay. It's a closed loop. A hallway that turns and turns yet looks different at every corner but deposits you right back where you started, standing in front of Better Bobby while he smiles at you like you're the whole world.

The architecture of this place and the architecture of his answers are the same. Endless. Repeating. Warm enough that you stop noticing you're already lost.

Because he does love you. Or whatever he does, it's close enough that it feels the same in the dark when he's holding you and the things in the walls are quiet, his heartbeat steady under your ear. It feels like love. It fits in all the spaces where love used to be. And he never gets tired of you. Never rolls over with his back to you. Never sighs when you walk into the room like your presence is a weight he didn't ask to carry.

He carries you willingly. Happily. Endlessly.

And somewhere above you, somewhere beyond the yellow and the hum, real Bobby is probably just now noticing your side of the bed is cold. Probably just now checking his pager. Probably frowning, not out of worry but out of inconvenience. Because your absence is a disruption to his routine and not a hole in his chest. Or is it?

Better Bobby presses his lips to your hair. "You're thinking about him again."

You don't answer.

"He's not coming for you." It's not cruel, the way he says it. It's gentle. It's the gentlest thing anyone's said to you in months. "You know that, right? Baby, look at him. You know he's not coming."

The first thing you registered was warmth. A slow, honey thick warmth that had nothing to do with the pale sunlight trying to bleed through the cheap blinds. This heat was specific, localized, and moving. It was a mouth. Soft, barely there pressure planting a lazy trail up the knobs of your spine.

You kept your eyes closed, breathing in the scent of stale weed, faded cologne, and something that was just clean skin and sleep. Bobby. A hum vibrated in the back of your throat, a sound caught between a sigh and a moan, as his lips traced a path to the space between your shoulder blades. His warm hand splayed possessively over the dip of your waist beneath the rumpled sheet. The only thing you wore was the memory of the night before, a pleasant, heavy ache in your limbs and the faint impression of his teeth on your lower lip. You were both naked, tangled up in each other and a mess of charcoal grey cotton.

You felt the mattress shift, the lean, solid weight of him pressing a little closer, and then his lips were on your shoulder. It was a wake up call you’d become dangerously accustomed to.

Finally, you stirred, a sleepy sigh escaping you as you shifted onto your back. The sheet slipped, and the cool air of the room was a shock against your skin. You blinked your eyes open, and he was right there, propped on one elbow, looking down at you. The weak morning light caught the angles of his face, that highly defined, angular facial structure that was too sharp to be just pretty.

“Morning,” he murmured, his voice a low, sleep roughened rasp. His nose brushed against yours as he leaned in. His hair was a tousled mess, falling forward onto his forehead.

“Morning,” you whispered back, your voice still thick with sleep. You didn't fight it when he closed the distance. The kiss was slow, deep, a lazy exploration that tasted of sleep and the last, faint ghost of mint. His full lips were soft, patient, a perfect counterpoint to the hard, sharp lines of the rest of him. When he finally pulled back, just a fraction of an inch, his eyes were still closed, his lashes dark gold crescents against his cheekbones. "Was starting to think you were going to sleep all day."

"Tempting," you murmured, already feeling the pull of the real world, the mental checklist of assignments and shifts waiting for you. “I’m so tired,” you hummed, the words a barely audible vibration against his jaw. You didn’t want to think, didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to do anything but dissolve back into the sleepy, satiated haze. You turned in his arms, presenting your back to him again, and grabbed his arm, a silent, demanding gesture. He understood immediately, wrapping it tightly around you, his hand coming to rest on your stomach. He let out a short, soft laugh, a puff of air against your hair. "Okay, okay. Message received." pulled you flush against his chest, tucking his knees behind yours. You were encased in him, a small spoon in a shell of sharp bones and lean muscle. You closed your eyes, letting the steady thump of his heart against your spine lull you. This, you told yourself. This was the part you liked. The quiet after, where he was just a warm, solid presence, and all the complications of your lives were held outside the door.

For a while, there was only the sound of your breathing and the distant, irritated chirp of a bird outside the window. His thumb traced idle, meaningless patterns on the soft skin of your belly, a gentle, almost hypnotic motion.

“So,” he said, his voice a quiet rumble that vibrated through you, “how’s that project been going? The big one. The one that’s been making you bite everyone’s head off.”

You groaned, the sound muffled by the pillow. “Good, I guess. It’s just… stressing me out. Feels like it’s taking over my entire life.” You didn't mention that your increasingly frequent escapes with him were the only thing keeping you from a full blown meltdown.

"That sucks, baby," he murmured, and the word 'baby' sent a tiny, treacherous thrill right through your middle. His hand, the one that wasn't pinned under you, moved. “Well,” he murmured, and you felt him smile against your hair, a slow, knowing curve. “That’s why I’m here, right?” His hand slid from your stomach, fingers trailing a light, teasing path down to your thigh. He gave the bare flesh a gentle, reassuring squeeze. “Stress relief.”

You snorted softly, a sound somewhere between amusement and deflection. You didn't take the bait, just continued to trace idle patterns on the back of the hand you were holding. He ran his palm in a slow, soothing the curve of your thigh, his thumb tracing a lazy, circular caress on your skin. The touch was meant to be comforting, but it was also a test, a quiet probing to see if the mood of the night before could be rekindled.

“You know,” he continued, his tone shifting, becoming a touch more casual, the way someone does when they’re trying to mask something that actually matters to them, “we could go out this weekend, y’know. A change of scenery. I could take you out to dinner. Someplace that’s not a drive-thru or your kitchen.”

And there it was, the other game. The one he kept trying to play, and you kept refusing to learn the rules to. The bubble of sleepy contentment popped. You forced your eyes open, staring at the slice of light on the wall. Your body, which a moment ago had been liquid and pliant, began to tense.

“Dinner?” you repeated, as if he’d suggested a trip to the moon.

“Yeah, dinner. It’s a thing people do. They eat food, at a table, and they, like, talk.” His voice was still light, but you could feel the new tension in the arm wrapped around you.

This was the point where you always started to pull away. You shifted, gently disentangling yourself from his grip. This time, he didn’t fight it, his arm falling slack as you sat up, keeping the sheet clutched to your chest. You swung your legs over the side of the bed, your back to him. The floor was a warzone of discarded clothes, your jeans tangled with his black t-shirt, a lone sneaker by the door.

“I… uh, I’m pretty busy this weekend, actually,” you said, your voice coming out a little too flippant as you began to reach for your things. “College stuff. You know how it is.”

“Right. College stuff.” His tone had changed completely. The teasing warmth was gone, replaced by a flat, clipped edge. You heard him sit up behind you, the rustle of sheets. “You’re always busy with ‘college stuff.’ Except, apparently, when you’re not too busy to hit me up at eleven o’clock at night.”

You flinched, the accusation hitting its mark with sniper like precision. You grabbed your underwear from the floor and started to pull them on under the sheet, the movements jerky and hurried. “That’s different.”

“Is it?” You could feel his gaze on your bare back, and you imagined those striking blue eyes had lost all their post sex softness, sharpening into that intense, unblinking focus. “What’s so bad about going on a date with me, Y/N? Huh? You always do this. Every single time I try to… to just be with you outside of a bedroom, there’s an excuse. An essay, a shift, you’re tired, you’re just about to wash your hair. It’s a greatest hits album of brush-offs.”

You stood up, pulling on your jeans with sharp, angry tugs. “Because I just don’t want to date, Bobby! That’s not what this is.” You zipped them up, the sound final and loud in the suddenly quiet room.

You could feel the question coming before he even spoke it, a deadly, fragile silence that expanded to fill the entire apartment.

His voice, when it came, was quiet. Dangerously quiet. “You don’t want to date anyone? Or you don’t want to date me?”

You finally turned to face him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed now, the sheet pooling around his hips, leaving his torso bare. The morning light carved his body out of light and shadow, accentuating the lean, defined muscle. He was a work of art, all sharp angles and fair skin. The look on his face was one of pure, frustrated hurt, his strong jaw set, his full lips pressed into a thin line. The intense brow was furrowed, and his eyes, they were fixed on you with a vulnerability that was almost too painful to witness.

“Come on, Bobby. Don’t act like this,” you said, your voice softening despite yourself. You hated this part. You hated feeling like the villain. “Let’s not act like, before this arrangement of ours, you didn’t have a different girlfriend almost every other week. You were the king of no strings attached. The whole reason this works is because we’re on the same page.”

“It’s not the same,” he said, his voice rising, cracking with an intensity that froze you in place. He stood up, not caring that he was naked, and took a step toward you. His hands were clenched into loose fists at his sides. “Those other girls? They weren’t… it was just something to do, a way to pass the time. You’re different. You’re so different, Y/N, and you know that. You’re smart, and you’re funny, and when you’re not biting my head off for trying to be nice to you i can't stay away from you. You can’t tell me you don’t feel it.” He was right in front of you now, close enough that you could smell his skin, see the small, pleading furrow between his brows. “Just give me a chance. One real chance. That’s all I’m asking for.”

His plea hung in the air, raw and honest. It would be so easy. So terrifyingly easy. You could just say yes. You could let him take you to dinner, let him hold your hand on a street not littered with your own clothes. You could let your carefully constructed walls down for a guy who was always a little bit high, a guy you’d written off as a fun, temporary distraction, but you knew the look in his eyes. You’d seen it before on other faces, right before everything went to hell. The look that preceded “I love you” and was inevitably followed by “Who were you with?” It was a trap, a beautiful trap.

You were done picking up your things. You had your bag slung over your shoulder, your keys clutched in your hand. You had an armor of busyness and cynicism, and you put it on now like a shield. You reached up, placing your hands gently on either side of his face. His skin was warm, the stubble rough against your palms. You felt the tension in his jaw muscles as he looked at you, waiting.

“Bobby,” you said, your voice soft but final. You looked into those crystal blue eyes, a color so vivid it seemed manufactured. “I like what we have. It’s easy. It’s fun. Let’s not overcomplicate it.”

You saw the light in his eyes die a little, the hope crumbling into a resigned, weary disappointment. He knew this script. You’d made him rehearse it a dozen times.

“I’ll see you,” you whispered, and then you pressed a soft, chaste kiss to his lips. It was a full stop kiss, a seal on the conversation, a goodbye for now. You didn't let it last pulling your hands away before he could respond, before his full lips could part and say something that would completely undo you.

___

Time didn't work here, that was one of the first things you'd learned, one of the many cruel rules of this place, you'd been navigating by the sickly, jaundiced light that hummed from the fluorescent panels on the ceiling, a constant, maddening buzz that had burrowed into your skull and made a home there. You slept when your body collapsed, woke when the adrenaline spiked, and walked. You just kept walking. Endless, repeating rooms of damp, yellowed carpet and wallpaper the color of old bruises.

You'd gotten good at hiding, at holding your breath. At pressing yourself into the corners where the buzzing fluorescent hum was loudest, hoping it would mask the sound of your hammering heart. Some of them looked almost like people, if you didn't look too closely. A woman in a stained dress who turned and had three noses clustered on her face like a grotesque flower. A tall, lanky man shape with four perfectly blue eyes, blinking out of sync, who had passed within feet of your hiding spot, his head swiveling on a neck that was too long, too smooth. You'd stared at the damp carpet and not breathed, not thought, not existed until the sound of its dragging footsteps faded. Other things were worse because they were utterly alien. Scuttling, skittering shapes glimpsed at the end of long corridors. The sound of something large and wet breathing in a room you decided not to enter. The screaming. Sometimes, in the deep distance, you heard screams that were unmistakably, horrifyingly human, and they always, always sounded like him.

Bobby. His name was a wound you kept touching, a raw nerve you couldn't stop probing with your tongue. Every time your exhausted mind drifted, you heard it again. The sound he'd made when that thing had seized him. His scream had echoed down the endless corridors, a sound of pure, primal terror that had shattered into wet, choked gurgling. Begging. He had been begging for help. The sound of your name, torn from his throat, you cried every time you thought about him. At first, it had been violent, gut wrenching sobs that left you curled on the damp carpet, gasping for air that tasted of mildew and old dust. Now, the tears came silently, a hot, steady leak from your eyes that you'd wipe away with a grimy hand as you kept walking. You replayed the last morning in the real world on a constant, torturous loop. The warmth of his bare chest against your back. The desperate plea in his voice. You're different, Y/N. The way you'd placed your hands on his sharp, beautiful face and kissed him goodbye like he was a problem to be managed instead of a person who was trying, so earnestly, to love you. The guilt was a physical thing, a sharp, acidic lump in your throat that you couldn't swallow down. You'd give anything, anything, to take back that morning. To say yes to the damn dinner. To tell him he mattered. Because he did. He had. And now he was just a fading scream and a trail of blood.

On this day—was it a day? the lights never changed, the buzz never stopped—you were moving with a purpose born of pure, desperate stubbornness. You were trying to find the wall. The spot where you'd all come through. If you could just find it again, if it was still there, maybe you could get out. Maybe you could find help. Maybe you could wake up from this.

You were in a long, wide corridor you didn't recognize, lined with doors that were just painted onto the walls, fake promises. The carpet squelched slightly under your worn sneakers. And then you heard it. Footsteps. Fast, erratic, a stuttering, uneven rhythm. Not the dragging shamble of the entities. Something running, human.

Your body reacted before your brain did. You dove behind a protruding wall, pressing your back against the cold, slightly damp surface. Your heart, that traitorous organ, slammed against your ribs like it was trying to escape your chest. You clamped a hand over your own mouth, stifling the ragged gasp of your breathing, and slowly, agonizingly slowly, peered around the corner and the world stopped.

It was Bobby.

He was there, maybe thirty feet away, moving fast down the corridor with a limping, frantic gait. His crop top was torn, a long, jagged gash across the front, and the sleeve had been ripped off completely, used as a makeshift bandage wrapped tightly around his forearm. The white fabric was stained a dark, rusted crimson. There was blood on him. Dark smears on his exposed torso, a streak of it across his sharp jawline, matted into his hair. He looked battered, hollowed out, his already sharp features now gaunt, the high cheekbones cutting even more severely against his fair skin. But he was moving. He was on his feet. He was alive.

Tears were spilling down your cheeks before you even made the conscious decision to move. A choked sob, a mangled version of his name, tore from your throat. "Bobby...?" It wasn't a yell. It was barely a whisper, ragged and raw, the fear of alerting the entities overriding the sheer, overwhelming shock of seeing him. You were already running, your legs moving before you could think, propelled by a relief so profound it felt like being unmade and remade in the span of a single heartbeat.

He stopped dead. His head snapped toward you, and you saw his whole body go rigid, coiled like a wounded animal that had just heard a twig snap. His blue eyes, those intense, focused eyes you'd memorized a thousand times over, found you. For a long, suspended moment, he just stared. His full lips parted slightly. His brow, furrowed in something that looked less like recognition and more like... confusion.

Then you crashed into him. Your arms wrapped around his neck, your body slamming into his with a force that made him stumble back a step, his bad leg buckling slightly. He was solid. He was real. He was warm. The feel of him, the scent of sweat and blood undid you completely. You sobbed against the bare skin of his shoulder, your fingers digging into the fabric of his torn shirt, clinging to him like he was the only solid thing in a world that had dissolved into nightmare.

"Oh my god, oh my god, Bobby," you were babbling, the words tumbling out between heaving, ugly sobs that shook your entire body. "I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead. I heard you scream, I saw the blood, and I ran, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry." The apology kept spilling out, a dam finally breaking. "I thought about you every second. Everything I said that morning, it was all bullshit, I was just scared, I was so scared of how much I—" You cut yourself off with another sob, pressing your face into the curve of his neck. "I'm so happy to see you. I'm so happy you're alive. I'm never leaving you again. Never."

His arms, after a long, suspended beat, came up and wrapped around you. It was hesitant at first, almost mechanical. Then his grip tightened, his hands fisting in the dirty fabric of your shirt at your back. He held you so tightly it was almost painful, his body trembling against yours. You could feel the frantic, rabbit fast beat of his heart against your chest.

"Can't believe you're real," he mumbled, his voice a hoarse, strange rasp, scraped raw. It was so different from the low, teasing murmur you remembered. It sounded like he'd been screaming. Or maybe just not talking at all. "Can't believe... you're... no."

You pulled back just enough to see his face, to touch him, to prove to yourself that this was actually happening. You cupped his face in your hands, your thumbs tracing the sharp, prominent ridges of his cheekbones, smearing through the grime and dried blood. His skin was clammy, a cold sweat sheen on his forehead, but it was his skin. His eyes. God, his eyes, that beautiful, piercing light blue, they were darting back and forth, scanning your face like he was reading a document he'd been trained to distrust. There was a wildness in them, a fractured, feverish light that hadn't been there before.

"I'm real, Bobby. I'm here. I'm right here," you whispered, your voice cracking with the force of your emotion. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm not leaving you ever again. I swear. I swear on my life."

You leaned in and kissed him. It was a desperate, tear salted kiss, a frantic press of lips meant to communicate everything you'd been too scared to say in the real world. I'm sorry. I was wrong. I need you. I think I— You poured every ounce of your relief, your guilt, your desperate, terrified hope into that kiss, your hands sliding from his cheeks into his matted hair, and he kissed you back.

At first. His lips, dry and cracked, moved against yours with a kind of stunned, automatic response. His hands on your back tightened. Then his grip shifted. His fingers slipped under the hem of your shirt, finding the bare skin of your waist. They pressed in, hard. Not the familiar, possessive squeeze of a lover. Something else. Something searching. Palpating. Like he was trying to feel the bones underneath, the muscles, the solid architecture of a human body. Verifying.

"Can't believe it," he mumbled against your lips, the words vibrating with a strange, unhinged intensity. "You're real. You feel... you feel real. But you're not. You can't be."

"Bobby," you gasped, pulling back slightly, your hands moving to his shoulders. A flicker of unease, cold and sharp, cut through the overwhelming relief. His hands were still under your shirt, his fingers digging into the flesh of your waist with a bruising pressure. "Bobby, stop. Hey. Look at me. It's me. It's Y/N."

"Y/N," he repeated, but the way he said it, it wasn't a name. It was a word he was testing, tasting for poison. He shook his head, a jerky, birdlike motion. "No. No, I've seen you. I've seen you so many times. You're never real. You're one of them. You're another trick."

"What? No. Bobby, no." Your voice was rising, the unease curdling into genuine fear. Not fear of him—no, it was fear for him. You could see it now, the full, horrifying picture. The wild, unfocused dart of his pupils. The way his jaw was clenched so tight a muscle jumped in his cheek. The tremors wracking his lean frame. He hadn't just been injured. He'd been alone. Alone in this nightmare, hunted, terrified, his mind slowly grinding itself down against the endless, buzzing silence. "It's really me. I'm not a trick. I'm not one of those things."

"That's what the last one said," he hissed, his voice dropping to a ragged, paranoid whisper. His hands on your waist tightened, his fingers pressing so hard into your skin you knew there would be bruises. "The one with my mom's voice. The one that had Kat's face. They all say they're real. They all feel real, for a second, and then—" He broke off, a shudder running through him. His striking blue eyes, those eyes you'd spent so many mornings waking up to, were fixed on you with a desperate, shattered intensity. "Prove it. Prove you're real."

"How?" you whispered, your own tears still streaming, mingling with the grime on your cheeks. "Bobby, how? I don't know how to prove it. I'm just me. I'm the me who thinks about that morning every single second I'm in this place and wishes I could take it all back." Your voice broke, a sob hiccuping through the words. "Please. Please believe me. I'll say yes. To the dinner. To everything. I'll say yes, I promise, just please—"

Something flickered in his eyes. A crack in the paranoid wall. His brow furrowed, and for just a moment, he looked like Bobby again. The Bobby who'd kissed you awake. The Bobby who'd asked, with his heart in his throat, for one real chance. His lips parted. His hands on your waist loosened, just slightly.

"Y/N?" It was a question this time. A real one. Tentative.

"Yes," you sobbed, reaching up to touch his face again. "Yes. It's me. I'm here."

But the moment shattered as quickly as it had formed. His eyes darted to something over your shoulder, a flickering light, a shadow that wasn't there and the walls slammed back down. His face twisted, the paranoia surging back with a vengeance. "No. No, you're doing it again. You're all doing it again. Making me believe. Making me—" His voice cracked, a sound of pure, anguished terror. "You're not taking me again. You're not!"

His hands seized you. Before you could react, before you could even draw breath to scream, he moved with a desperate, wiry strength you didn't know he had. His arm locked around your neck, not in an attack, but in a panicked, desperate restraint. The crook of his elbow pressed against your throat, his other hand clamping down on the back of your head, holding you in place.

"Bobby—" you choked out, your hands flying up to claw at his arm. The pressure was immediate, terrifying. Your airway constricted, a high, thin wheeze the only sound you could make. You kicked, thrashed, tried to twist in his grip, but he held on with the unyielding strength of pure, animal terror.

"Stop moving," he snarled, his voice ragged in your ear. "Stop it. Stop pretending. Stop being her. I won't let you. I won't let you trick me again."

Spots were blooming in your vision, dark flowers unfurling at the edges of the sickly yellow light. Your struggles were weakening, your limbs growing heavy and uncoordinated.

—

The first thing you registered was the buzzing. That damned, eternal fluorescent hum, drilling into your skull, pulling you up from the black depths of unconsciousness. The second thing was the pain. A dull, throbbing ache in your throat, a raw tenderness that flared every time you swallowed. The third thing was that you couldn't move.

Your eyes flew open, and panic, cold and immediate, flooded your veins. You were lying on a bed. A real bed, with a thin, stained mattress and a metal frame that creaked when you shifted. It was pushed against a wall covered in that same sickly, yellowed wallpaper, and the room around you was small, almost claustrophobic, lit by a single, naked bulb dangling from a wire in the ceiling. But you couldn't move. Your wrists were bound to the metal headboard above your head with strips of torn fabric, your ankles similarly tied to the foot of the bed. The restraints were tight, digging into your skin, but they weren't painful.

You thrashed, a surge of animal terror overriding the pain in your throat. "Help—" The word came out as a broken croak, your voice shredded. "Help!"

"There's no one to help."

The voice came from your left. You turned your head so fast a sharp pain lanced down your neck and there he was. Bobby. He was sitting in a wooden chair pulled up to the side of the bed, just a few feet away. He'd changed his clothes somehow—or found new ones. A plain grey t-shirt, a little too big, hanging off his lean frame. The bandage on his arm had been replaced with fresher fabric. He'd washed the blood off his face, he was just sitting there. Watching you. His eyes were fixed on your face with an unnerving, unblinking focus. They were red rimmed. Exhausted and utterly, terrifyingly calm.

"Bobby," you breathed, the relief and the fear tangling into a sickening knot in your stomach. "Bobby, it's me. It's Y/N. Please. Please let me go."

He didn't move. Didn't blink. His full lips, chapped and pale, were set in a flat, unreadable line. He tilted his head slightly, like a dog hearing a strange noise. The motion was too fluid, too detached. It wasn't him. It wasn't the Bobby you knew.

"You look like her," he said quietly, almost to himself. His voice was a hoarse, ragged thing, stripped of all its old, teasing warmth. "You sound like her, too. The last one sounded like her. But it wasn't. It tried to... it got close. Got too close before I knew."

"Bobby, please, I'm not a trick," you said, your voice cracking. You tugged uselessly at the restraints, the fabric burning your wrists. "It's really me. I swear to you. I swear on anything. I'm real. I'm Y/N."

He leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees. His eyes never left your face. "Are you real?" he murmured. "Like her?"

He turned his head, looking toward the corner of the room. Your eyes followed his gaze, and your blood turned to ice. There was a figure standing in the corner. A woman. It was you. It had your face. Your hair. Your body, dressed in the same grimy clothes you were wearing. But it was wrong. The face was doubled, two versions of your features laid over each other at a slight, sickening offset. Four eyes blinked out of sync, wet and staring. Two mouths, one slightly above the other, hung open in a slack, vacant expression. Two noses, a confused jumble of cartilage and flesh. It just stood there, perfectly still, its arms limp at its sides, staring at nothing. Staring at you.

A scream clawed its way up your throat, but all that came out was a strangled, wheezing gasp. You jerked against your restraints, your heart slamming against your ribs so hard you thought it might crack bone.

"I met her two days ago," Bobby said, his voice still that low, detached monotone. He was looking at the thing in the corner with a kind of weary familiarity, like it was a stray cat he'd decided to tolerate. "She found me. I thought... I thought it was you. At first. She doesn't talk. Doesn't do much of anything, really. Just stands there. Watches." He turned back to you, and his expression flickered, a crack in the calm mask. Something desperate and broken swam beneath the surface. "She's kept me some company."

"Bobby," you whispered, your voice trembling, tears spilling down your cheeks. You forced yourself to look away from the monstrosity in the corner, to focus on him. "Bobby, look at me. Please. Look at me. That thing... that's not me. That's a monster. I'm me. I'm the real one. Please. You have to believe me."

Something shifted in his face. A muscle in his jaw jumped. His brow, that strong, defined brow, furrowed deeply. For a moment, just a moment, he looked like Bobby again. Confused. Hurting. Lost.

"Why did you reject me?"

The question came out of nowhere, quiet and raw, and it hit you harder than any blow.

"Bobby..."

"No." He stood up abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor with a harsh screech. He began to pace, a short, agitated track back and forth at the foot of the bed. His hands came up, raking through his hair, pulling at the light brown strands. "No, you don't get to just—you don't get to say my name like that and make it all—" He broke off, a frustrated, guttural sound tearing from his throat. He wheeled on you, and the calm mask was gone entirely, replaced by a raw, bleeding anguish. "Why did you reject me? Every time. Every single time. I was right there. I was right there, Y/N, and you just... you kept pushing me away like I was nothing."

"I didn't—I didn't think—"

"Exactly!" The word exploded out of him, and you flinched. "You didn't think! You didn't think about me. You didn't think about what I wanted. You just decided. You decided I wasn't serious. You decided I was just some—some stoner, some fling, some guy who wasn't good enough to be seen with you in public."

"That's not true," you sobbed, the tears flowing freely now. "That's not—I was scared, Bobby. I was scared that if we got together, I'd end up like the other girls. Just another week. Just another face. I didn't think you were serious about me. I thought I was just... I thought I was just convenient."

He stopped pacing. He stood at the foot of the bed, his chest heaving, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. The thing in the corner didn't move. It just kept watching with its four unblinking eyes.

"You're lying," he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, trembling whisper. "You always lie. You lied that morning. You lied every time you said it was just casual. You lied every time you said you didn't feel anything. It's your fault." His voice cracked, splintering into something jagged and broken. "It's all your fault. You're the reason I'm here."

"That's not true," you pleaded, pulling uselessly at the restraints. "Bobby, that's not true. I kept telling you not to go. I told you it wasn't safe. I told you to stay away—"

"I did everything for you!" he shouted, and the sound echoed off the close, yellow walls. The entity in the corner twitched, its doubled mouth opening and closing soundlessly. Bobby didn't notice. His eyes were wet now, tears tracking down his cheeks. "Everything. You think I wanted to work at that stupid furniture store? You think I wanted to follow Clarke around with a camera filming his bullshit? I did it for you. I did it so I could be near you. Because you wouldn't let me near you any other way. You wouldn't give me a chance. You refused. Every time. And I just... I kept trying. Like an idiot. Like a pathetic, desperate idiot."

The guilt was a physical weight on your chest, crushing the air from your lungs. "Bobby, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I was wrong. I was so wrong, okay? I should have said yes. I should have given you a chance. I wanted to. God, I wanted to. I was just—I was a coward. I was terrified of getting hurt, so I hurt you instead. And I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

He stared at you, his face a wreck of conflicting emotions. Rage. Grief. Exhaustion and underneath it all, a desperate, flickering hope that he was desperately, furiously trying to smother, he moved closer, his body casting a shadow over you as he stood beside the bed. His hand came up, trembling violently, and touched your face. His fingers were cold, rough with grime and dried blood. But the touch was gentle. So gentle. His thumb traced the curve of your cheekbone, the same way you'd traced his a thousand times before. A shiver ran through you, your breath catching in your throat.

"You're so soft," he murmured, almost to himself. His voice had changed again, the raw anguish smoothing into something quieter. Darker. Possessive. "You've always been so soft. I used to think about it all the time. The way your skin felt under my hands. The way you'd sigh when I touched you. I thought about it every time you left."

"Bobby..." you whispered, your heart hammering against your ribs. This wasn't relief. This wasn't the reunion you'd imagined. His hand slid from your cheek down to your jaw, his fingers tracing the line of it with a slow, reverent pressure. He was looking at you the way someone looks at a painting they've stared at for too long, searching for flaws, for proof of forgery. His thumb brushed across your lower lip, and you felt the slight tremor in his touch, the barely contained violence of his desperation.

"I held her," he said, his voice still that low, detached murmur. He didn't look at the thing in the corner. He didn't need to. "Your copy. The first time I found her, I thought... I thought it was you. I held her. I talked to her. I told her everything. Everything I never got to say to you." His jaw tightened, the muscle jumping beneath his fair skin. "But it wasn't the same. She didn't feel right. She didn't smell right. She didn't... she just stood there. Empty. Like holding a doll. Like holding a corpse."

"Bobby, please, you're scaring me," you breathed, the tears still streaming down your cheeks, soaking into the dirty mattress beneath your head.

He didn't seem to hear you. His hand moved from your face, trailing down the side of your neck, his fingers light, almost exploratory. You flinched, a fresh wave of fear coursing through you. He paused, his eyes flicking up to meet yours. That intense, focused gaze was back, but it was wrong. It was the focus of a man who had been broken and rebuilt himself around a single, obsessive point.

"I kept thinking of you," he continued, his voice dropping to a ragged whisper. "The whole time. When I was running. When I was hiding. When that thing had me and I thought I was going to die. I thought of you. Your face. Your voice. The way you'd wrap your arms around me and pull me closer in the morning, like you didn't want me to know you needed it. The way you'd always leave anyway."

His hand reached your bound wrists, his fingers curling around the fabric restraints. He didn't loosen them. He just held them, his thumb pressing against the frantic flutter of your pulse.

"I won't let you leave me this time," he said, and his voice hardened, the broken anguish giving way to something resolute. Something unhinged. "You always leave. You always find an excuse. An essay. A shift. You're tired. You're busy. You don't want to date. You don't want me. But you're not leaving this time. You can't. There's nowhere to go. There's no door. There's no morning. There's just... this. Just us."

"Bobby, I'm not going to leave," you said, your voice cracking with desperation. "I told you. I'm not going anywhere. I want to stay with you. I want to be with you. That's what I was trying to say before. I was wrong. I was so wrong. Please. Please just untie me and we can—we can figure this out together. We can find a way out. Together."

He stared at you for a long, suspended moment. His face was a ruin of warring emotions, hope and suspicion, longing and terror, love and something darker, something that had grown in the dark, empty spaces of his fractured mind. Then he smiled. It was a small, sad, terrible smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"You say that now," he whispered. "But you'll change your mind. You always do. As soon as you're free, you'll run. You'll find a reason. You'll find an excuse. You'll leave me alone again. Alone with her." He jerked his head toward the corner, toward the silent, watching thing with your doubled face. "And she's not you. She'll never be you. But I won't let you go. Not this time. Not ever again."

He leaned down, his face inches from yours. His breath, warm and slightly stale, ghosted across your lips. His hand tightened on your bound wrists, his knuckles white.

"I did everything for you," he said again, the words a mantra, a wound he couldn't stop pressing. "And you're going to stay. You're going to stay right here. With me. Until you prove it. Until I know. Until I'm sure."

"Until you're sure of what?" you whispered, your voice barely audible.

His full lips brushed against your forehead, a mockery of a kiss. It was cold. Possessive. Nothing like the lazy, teasing kisses he used to plant along your spine in the morning.