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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.

he can't answer that, obviously, because how could he explain that he'd been following you to catch a glimpse of your ass in the short skirt you wear? his ears glow a bright pink when you approach, his gaze dropping to his feet to avoid your scrutinizing glare. you scoff, smacking your sticky lips together as you roll your eyes, "weirdo."

nerd!휴닝카이 who offers to do your homework for you. any means to get closer to you. and you let him with a shrug, dumping your textbooks into his lap before walking away, hips swaying dangerously with each step you take. kai brings the books to his nose, trying to catch your scent on them in vain.

nerd!휴닝카이 stalks you on social media, phone in one hand, cock in the other — he jerks himself off roughly, swallowing down the pathetic whines building in his throat. he swipes through picture after picture, innocent ones of you holding puppies, suggestive ones of you pushing your cleavage toward the camera — those always makes him cum right away.

nerd!휴닝카이 who follows you like a lost puppy, your finished homework in his arms as he tries to give it to you. but you're ignoring him? he's walked behind you like a shadow for ten minutes now, trying to grab your attention and failing each time. you're leading him down vacant hallways, finally slipping inside a small storage unit — and kai goes after you without question.

nerd!휴닝카이 doesn't understand why you're so upset. doesn't understand why you're shoving him up against the wall roughly and jabbing a finger in his face. "who the fuck do you think you are to approach me in front of everyone like that? you fucking loser." you seethe, and kai's cock jumps in his pants at the crude words.

nerd!휴닝카이 can't help but get so turned on by the way you talk to him, each insult sends heat straight to his groin and he has to reach a hand down to subtly try to adjust himself. but you notice, because of course you do. eyebrows shooting high on your forehead, the confusion lasts only a moment before your expression morphs into a sinister one.

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀"the hell? are you hard right now?"

that only makes him whine as he nods weakly, glancing toward the closed door like he was planning a quick escape route. but you won't let him off the hook that easily. the books are shoved to the floor as you take a step closer, breath so close that it mixes with his own.

nerd!휴닝카이 practically melts when you first kiss him, lips parting to allow your tongue inside his mouth without thinking twice. you're mean, biting on his lip harshly, pulling a pained gasp from his throat as he tries to pull back — only to be stopped by your fingers in his hair — tugging hard.

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀"pathetic bitch, you wanted this all along? is that why you wanted to help me? hoping I'd suck your tiny dick?"

kai wants to tell you no, wants to shake his head and deny the blunt accusation, but he can't. his cock throbs in his pants, hips jerking forward helplessly when your fingers hover above the zipper. you scoff, pulling away from his lips, now smeared with your sparkly gloss, "fine, have it your way."

nerd!휴닝카이 nearly sees stars when you take him in your mouth. the storage room is dark but he can still make out your face, peering up at him through the shadows where you kneel on the floor. your skirt has ridden up your thighs, exposing more of the skin he'd been so desperate to see all this time.

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀"you got a real tiny dick y'know?"

your lips are still stretched wide around him, tears glistening in your eyes when you force him deeper. "you barely reach the back of my throat." for a moment he can almost believe it, and the thought alone sends a shudder through him as he chokes on a moan, hips thrusting deeper into your mouth, causing you to gag around him.

"fuck, are you trying to kill me? you loser, can't even stay still for a blowjob." and kai nods helplessly, hands grabbing at your shoulders hard enough to bruise. his eyes are squeezed shut, jaw slack as he lets himself by shamelessly loud, not caring who might hear him.

nerd!휴닝카이 cums embarrassingly fast, cock twitching on your tongue before forcing his load down your throat with a whine. you don't swallow, and when you pull off you rise to your feet only to spit his release back into his face.

nerd!휴닝카이 moans at the feeling of his own arousal dripping down his chin, eyes bleary when they find yours. he doesn't move to wipe himself clean, doesn't even bother tucking his soft cock back into his pants as he stares at you with a lopsided grin. you only roll your eyes, already reapplying the gloss across your lips.

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀"tell anyone about this and you're dead, you hear that, perv?"

then you head out of the storage unit, slamming the door shut behind you and leaving kai a spent, blissed out mess. his gaze flickers down to the books you had forgotten to bring with you, and he scrambles to gather his bearings — then he's rushing after you a second time that day.

for @biteyoubiteme <3

He also believes that you don't really do it on purpose, and that you are as pure and innocent as he is. But now that the old man is gone, you seem to have only gotten much worse.

Duncan can't help but glance at you when you're bathing in some lake, pretending to be mending a tear in some old piece of clothing or sharpening the blade of his sword. His eyes flick towards you every time he overhears a little splash, just like clockwork, followed by a sharp gulp.

The sound of water lapping against the rocks is the only thing that breaks the stillness of the forest. You’ve wandered just a few yards from camp, far enough to enjoy some privacy, but close enough to feel Dunk's protective presence.

You slide into the natural pool, gasping as the cold water embraces your bare body.

On the other side of the bushes, you hear the rhythmic “shhh-shhh” of the whetstone rubbing against the steel. Dunk is there, sitting on a fallen log, pretending to be deeply focused on his sword.

But you know that’s not really what’s going on.

From the surface of the water, you can see him through the branches. His jaw is clenched and his ears are tinged with a betraying shade of red.

Every time you emerge from the water and the sound of splashing reaches his ears, his shoulders tense. His pretty blue eyes, once brimming with a childlike sweetness, now scan for you on pure gut instinct, at odds with the decency that Ser Arlan so fiercely drummed into him.

“Dunk,” you call out gently, your voice drifting above the mist.

He flinches so violently that he almost lets the sword fall out of his hand. He clears his throat noisily, staring at some ants at his feet.

“Y–yes? Is something wrong? Is it—is it too cold?” he asks breathlessly, without turning his head even a fraction of an inch.

“It’s perfect,” you reply, emerging from the water with exaggerated leisure. You know he can hear the water dripping steadily down your body. “But I could use that old cloak you were mending. I left mine by the fire.”

You hear him getting up. His steps are heavy, purposeful, but when he reaches the edge of the thicket, he stops dead in his tracks.

“Here... here it is,” he tells you, blindly stretching out his arm through the leaves, offering you the fabric.

You step closer to the edge and, instead of taking the cloak right away, you brush his fingers with yours. You feel the heat radiating from his skin, the rush of blood in his big hand. Dunk lets out a quiet gasp, and for a second, his self-control weakens. His eyes drift away, meeting yours.

“I–I’m sorry,” he quickly apologizes, covering his eyes with his hands to force himself to respect your boundaries. “So sorry”

That makes you smirk playfully, pulling the cloak up around your damp body. “It's nothing you haven't seen before, Duncan.”

You tell him that often. And every time, he is reduced to a blushing, stammering mess.

Sometimes, when he comes back from shopping at a nearby grocery market or roadside merchant, he is almost knocked off his feet when he finds you down on the grass, on all fours to look through the thick bushes for those berries you like so much.

But could they really be found so low to the ground?

His wide eyes are moving on their own before he can even think to try to control them, gliding over your hair, the stretch of your back, and then slowing down as they trace the curve of your bum, that looks absurdly more defined in that skirt.

With a little push you make forward, the fabric slides up a bit more, revealing more of the skin on your legs for his eyes only.

Your hips have widened, the shape of your waist is exquisitely defined, and your exposed skin seems to glow in the light of the spring sunshine.

Dunk feels his mouth go dry instantly and he just stands there, holding the handbag in one hand, his grip gradually loosening as the moment ticks by.

His dilated eyes roam the contour of your hips with an intensity that overwhelms him, a surge of arousal that makes him feel lightheaded with longing.

“Dunk?” you call out as you stretch a little further to reach a particularly red berry, without actually turning around. “Is that you?”

Of course you know it’s him and that he’s there; you’ve heard him approaching ever since he stepped into the woods. But you do like to have a bit of fun, to tease him.

Duncan is frozen in place, the sack of groceries hanging from his fingers as if it weighed a ton. The sound of his own breathing seems loud in the silence of the clearing.

He tries to articulate a response, but his throat feels as if he has been swallowing desert sand.

“Y–yes... it’s me,” he finally manages to squeak out.

He watches with a face bright red as you stretch again, how the fabric of your skirt is pulled tight against your curves and how the sunlight reflects off the softness of your skin.

It is an exquisite form of torture.

“Did you bring what I asked for?” you inquire innocently, arching your back just slightly enough that the motion is impossible to overlook.

“A–aye. I brought... apples. And some—cheese,” he swallows hard, muffling his wheezing voice and blinking sharply to try to snap himself out of the daze. “M’lady... you should—I mean, you could prick yourself on the thorns. It’s not safe to be like that... anyone could...”

You laugh softly, a vibrating sound that sends a chill down Dunk's spine.

“Anyone could...?” you repeat, feigning concern as you finally lean back up, slower than necessary. You turn just enough so that he can see your smile over your shoulder. “There’s no one here but you, Dunk.”

Duncan, just as you are turning your head toward him, forces himself to look everywhere but at you: at the trees, the sky, birds dancing and chirping in the branches above.

“You shouldn't tease like that,” he mumbles, his voice tense. “It's not… appropriate.”

“Appropriate?” you echo, rising to your feet at last, a berry crunching between your teeth.

You take a step toward him, then another.

Dunk recoils instinctively, stepping back from you as if you were a flame that could burn him if he got too close.

“You know what I mean,” he chokes. “You shouldn’t… move like that.”

You look down at your own body, pretending to examine yourself with utter confusion.

“Move how?” you ask, tilting your head innocently, biting your lower lip that’s still stained with the berries’ red juice. “I was just looking for berries.”

“You... you know how,” he manages to croak out at an unusually husky tone, his blue eyes blinking rapidly back down at you. “Like a... like a cat. Or like something from the songs that lures knights into the swamps to drown them.”

“I'm not a fairy tale witch, Duncan. I'm just a woman,” you reply quietly, drawing closer to him to be within arm's reach. Then you hold out your hand, offering him a single perfectly ripe berry. “And you're not a knight yet, are you? You're just a man.”

Dunk leisurely lowers his gaze to your outstretched hand, following the extent of your arm down to the berry, only to return to your eyes, entranced by the hypnotic magnetism of them.

His imposing physique recoils under the overwhelming weight of your attentive gaze and the sweet, alluring glint in your eyes—a gaze that entices him closer. Despite his massive body, Dunk is nothing more than a timid little mouse in your presence.

“Ser Arlan isn't here anymore, Dunk. What are you so afraid of?” You continue speaking so sweetly, attempting to coax him, using a voice as velvety as silk. You press the berry against his lower lip. “Eat now. You've been walking in the sun all morning. You must be hungry.”

Hungry, he certainly is. Just not exactly starved for some woodland berries.

Dunk doesn't take the berry with his hand, instead his lips fall open instinctively as he tilts his head closer to your hand. As his mouth closes over the little fruit in your palm, his tongue brushes against your skin—a flutter of accidental touch that sets off a ripple of heat through your body.

But you realize it was no accident when you catch sight of the way he's looking down at you now, licking the berry juice from his lips and humming in appreciation, reveling in the lingering taste of your skin on the tip of his tongue.

“Mhm, really good,” he drawls, lifting his eyebrows and nodding in approval.

That's the first time Duncan has ever gone along with one of your little flirtations, but that's all it is, nothing more. He doesn't tease you back, he doesn't ask you to give him another berry, he doesn't even bother to glance at you as he shuffles past you, practically stumbling back to camp.

It is a modest victory, but the fact that he has dared to touch your hand with his tongue is a sign that Ser Arlan's lessons are losing the battle against his own natural instincts.

The days go by and that little spark seems to have been extinguished. Dunk has put his walls back up, higher and stronger than ever.

Every time you try to brush his arm as you walk side by side, he finds an excuse to adjust Thunder's load. If you smile sweetly at him during breakfast, he suddenly focuses on a non-existent stain on his coat. It's like trying to melt a mountain with a firefly; completely hopeless.

You reach an inn on your way south, somewhere along the way. The place is crowded, filled with smoke and the acrid smell of cheap ale. Dunk sits in a corner, his gaze low as he drinks, carrying out his role as silent and boring guardian.

Tired of bumping into his armor of politeness, you decide you've had enough.

You get up and head to the bar and it takes less than a moment to catch the eye of a burly-looking mercenary with a scar on his cheek and an easy laugh. You lean against the counter, letting your shoulder brush against his, and let out a laugh that echoes above the din of the tavern.

“And you say you're traveling alone with that giant?” asks the mercenary, eyeing you up and down.

“He's been my friend for as long as I can remember,” you answer lightheartedly, making sure Dunk hears you, because of course he's listening and observing everything you do. “But he's a very... reserved man. I've almost forgotten what an interesting conversation is.”

The man bursts out laughing and tilts his head toward you, his face just inches from yours. Offering you a sip from his own mug, you lean in and accept, drinking slowly and staring at him with an intensity you've reserved exclusively for Dunk, until now.

The creaking of wood makes you flinch.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Dunk spring to his feet, knocking his chair backward with a heavy thud.

He is standing behind you, his huge frame casting a shadow over your own. The mercenary glances up, turning pale at the sight of the tall figure menacingly looming in front of him.

“No more drinks,” Dunk growls. His voice is a low rumble, carrying a possessiveness you have never heard in it before.

“Hey, easy there, big guy, we were just…” the mercenary begins.

Dunk doesn’t let him finish.

He puts a hand on your waist and forces you to spin around to his side.

“We're leaving. Now,” he orders, looking you straight in the eye.

His jaw is clenched so tightly that his teeth look like they're about to burst. His pupils are dilated, and for the first time, there is no trace of Ser Arlan in his gaze. There is only a jealous man who has reached his limit.

He doesn't even give you a moment to say goodbye to your new friend; Duncan is already dragging you out of the tavern with him.

The cold night air hits your face as soon as Dunk pushes open the tavern doors, but the heat emanating from his hand around your waist is all it takes to keep you burning.

“Let go of me, Duncan!” you exclaim, but there’s a hint of triumph in your voice that you can’t quite hide. You break free from his grip with a sudden movement and turn to face him, crossing your arms over your chest. “What’s wrong with you? I was having a pleasant conversation for the first time in weeks.”

Dunk comes to a sharp halt and turns toward you, his blue eyes glowing with anger in the darkness of the night.

“That conversation was not pleasant,” he snarls. “That man was looking at you as if you were a piece of meat at a banquet!”

“You don’t look at me, Dunk!” you fire back, waving your hands in exasperation. “You don't talk to me unless it's to tell me the road is long or the porridge is ready. If you don't want to appreciate what's right in front of you, don't complain when someone else decides to.”

“Seven fuck—you did it on purpose,” he gasps accusingly, his voice descending to a dangerously low murmur. “You knew I was watching. You knew I was going out of my mind sitting there while that fool was touching you—you're—fucking infuriating”

“Infuriating?” you repeat, breaking into a short, bitter laugh, feeling offended, and taking a step toward him until your shoes touch his leather boots. “What’s infuriating is having to seduce half the realm just to get you to stop looking at your own bloody hands and look at me instead!”

He keeps staring at you, catching his breath.

“I don't even know why you're whining so much. After all...” you make a dramatic pause, looking him up and down with a slow, disillusioned gaze, “it's not like you’re actually going to do anything about it.”

You turn around with an graceful sway of your hips and make your way back to your camp, concealed in the woods, and don't look back.

Dunk arrives long after you, shifting like a clumsy shadow through the trees. You hear him collapse onto his bedroll across the dying fire, letting out heavy sighs that betray how far sleep is from his grasp.

You smile to yourself, tucked away in your little tent, relishing the chaos you’ve sown in his mind.

The next morning, the sun is just beginning to filter through the leaves when you decide you’re ready to step outside. You expect to find him getting ready for the road, maybe still grumpy or avoiding your gaze as usual.

But what you see takes your breath away.

Dunk is standing with his back to your tent, shirtless.

The fresh dawn breeze brushes against his sun-tanned skin, and his shoulders, broad and powerful, flex and relax rhythmically. He is chopping wood with a small axe, each blow sharp and forceful, causing the muscles in his back to ripple in the golden light. Sweat makes his skin glow, accentuating every scar and line of his muscular, massive build.

You are frozen in the opening of the tent, just standing there watching him.

All of a sudden, he ceases his work, sticks the axe into the log, and slowly turns around. He doesn't seem surprised to see you; on the contrary, there is a fresh spark in his blue eyes, a look you haven't seen in him before—confidence.

“Good morrow,” he tells you. His voice is so deep, filling the clearing. He’s not in a hurry to get clothes on. Instead, he runs a hand through his messy hair and gives you one of those lazy, longing glances you usually give him. “You slept a lot. I thought maybe we should stay another day here, y’know?”

You linger there, your hand still gripping the fabric of the tent, suddenly feeling very small in front of his towering nude figure.

“Did the cat get your tongue?” he teases with a raised eyebrow, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, a motion that causes his biceps and pecs to flex in a very appealing way—one that makes your mouth water and your stomach flutter.

The tables have turned so fast you can practically feel the whiplash. Seeing Dunk like this—exposed, sweat-slicked, and radiating a sudden, quiet authority—is almost too much to handle.

You try to summon that playful, teasing voice that usually leaves him stammering, but your throat feels so tight.

“I... I was just going to the river to bathe,” you manage to say, your voice a little higher than you intended. You wrap your arms around yourself, trying to look unimpressed despite the way your eyes keep betraying you, darting down to the hard lines of his stomach. “Since you’re so busy playing lumberjack, I figured I'd give you some space.”

Dunk huffs out a quiet laugh, low in his chest.

“Space?” he repeats, almost amused. “You’ve never cared much about giving me that before.”

You shift your weight from one foot to the other under that look of his.

It’s irritating.

And unsettling.

And strangely... thrilling.

“Well,” you say, lifting your chin a little, trying to recover your composure, “maybe I’ve grown considerate overnight.”

“Mm,” Dunk nods slowly, though his expression says he doesn’t believe a word of it.

A breeze moves through the clearing, stirring the leaves and lifting a strand of your hair across your face. Dunk’s eyes follow the motion absentmindedly before drifting lower again—down your neck, the loose collar of your chemise, the bare curve of your shoulder and then, your breasts.

You feel it.

Seven hells, you feel it.

You cross your arms tighter, pretending it’s because of the morning chill and that you're not as lustful as a cat in heat, and that your nipples have stood erect ever since you saw the broad expanse of his back.

“Don’t stop working on my account,” you mutter. “I wouldn’t want to distract you.”

That earns a crooked smile from him.

“River’s that way, my lady,” he says, nodding past the trees. “If you’re bathing.”

You hesitate, because now that sounds like a challenge.

“Oh, I know where it is,” you reply lightly.

Silence stretches between you, birds chatter somewhere in the canopy above, and the fire crackles faintly behind him.

Then Dunk says, casually:

“You’re not going?”

You narrow your eyes. “I said I was.”

“...but?”

Your cheeks warm, and you hate that he’s noticed.

“I was waiting for you to turn around,” you shoot back. “Some of us like our privacy.”

“You?” Dunk huffs, incredulous. “Privacy?”

You glare at him. “Yes, Duncan. Privacy.”

He lifts both hands in mock surrender, though the grin on his face lingers. “Alright, m’lady. I’ll be a perfect gentleman for you, then.”

Then he makes a small, exaggerated show of turning around, presenting you with the broad expanse of his back again.

You slide the chemise down one shoulder.

Then the other.

The morning air kisses your bare skin, cool and bright beneath the rising sun. You step out of the garment and let it fall into the grass behind you.

Dunk exhales sharply and you smile to yourself.

“Thought you weren’t looking,” you say sweetly.

“I’m not,” he answers quickly.

The lie sits awkwardly in his voice.

You let out a soft, amused hum and continue down the narrow path toward the river, the morning grass cool beneath your bare feet. The trees thin as you approach the water, sunlight breaking through the leaves in bright golden patches.

You glance over your shoulder just in time to see him stepping through the trees after you, large and unhurried, his expression no longer shy or flustered but stubbornly resolved.

The river glimmers ahead, cool and clear as it winds between mossy stones. You step down into the shallows, the cold water climbing slowly up your ankles, your calves, your knees.

It makes you gasp softly.

Behind you, Duncan reaches down to pull off his boots, dropping them onto the grass with a dull thud. Then his belt follows, the leather sliding free with a soft creak.

Your mouth opens slightly.

“Dunk—”

“You said it yourself,” he interrupts calmly, stepping closer to the water. “No one’s here but me.”

The water reaches his ankles, then his knees.

You can hear him exhale sharply at the coldness as he wades deeper.

His mouth tilts faintly, you can hear it in his voice.

“What’s the matter?” he asks, voice rumbling with quiet amusement. “You’ve been walking around me like a flame for weeks. Now you look nervous.”

You swallow, still with your back turned to him. “I’m not nervous.”

The words come out a little too fast.

Behind you, the river shifts softly around Dunk as he moves closer, the current curling around his legs. You can feel him there even without turning—his presence big and warm and just impossible to ignore.

For the first time in weeks, it isn’t him struggling to breathe.

It’s you.

“Mm,” he hums quietly, unconvinced.

You bend slightly, scooping a handful of cold water and letting it run over your arms, pretending to focus on the chill biting at your skin. The river only reaches your shoulders here, the surface rippling lazily in the morning light.

“Then why won’t you turn around?” he asks casually.

You swallow. “Because I’m bathing.”

“And I’m not?” he asks back.

You hear the faint splash as he dips his hands into the river, the sound of water sliding over skin. Your imagination, traitorous thing that it is, supplies the rest.

You force your tone to stay light. “You’ve bathed before without staring at me.”

“That was before,” Dunk says.

You finally glance back over your shoulder.

Big mistake.

He’s closer than you expected—standing waist-deep in the river, water streaming slowly down his chest and shoulders. His hair is damp where he’s splashed it, darker now, and his blue eyes are fixed on you with an intensity that makes your stomach flip.

Your heart stumbles.

“Well?” you say, forcing a teasing smile. “Enjoying the view?”

Dunk exhales through his nose, something between a laugh and a sigh.

“You’ve been asking that question for weeks,” he murmurs.

“And?” you challenge softly.

For a moment he doesn’t answer.

His gaze drifts—over your shoulder, your collarbone, the curve of your neck where droplets of water slide slowly down your skin.

Then his eyes come back to yours.

“Yes,” he says simply. “I am”

“Well,” you manage, trying to recover your playful tone, “that wasn’t very difficult to admit, was it?”

“You have no idea how difficult it was.” Dunk huffs quietly.

You tilt your head. “Oh, I think I do—”

Suddenly cold water splashes against your side.

You gasp, jumping slightly.

“Dunk!”

He’s grinning now, wide and unguarded in a way you’ve rarely seen.

“You were getting too comfortable again,” he chuckles.

“Oh, is that so?” Your eyes narrow.

You scoop up water and fling it back at him and the splash hits his shoulder and chest, droplets flying everywhere.

Water pushes against his broad hips as he moves, sending small waves rolling toward you. His grin hasn’t faded; if anything, it’s grown softer, warmer, like he’s finally letting himself enjoy the moment instead of fighting it.

“You’re smiling,” you note suspiciously.

“Aye,” he says.

“That usually means trouble.”

“Only for you.”

You splash him again in retaliation, but this time he’s close enough that it barely slows him.

Now the river barely moves between you. His chest rises and falls slowly, droplets of water sliding down the planes of his shoulders.

You suddenly become very aware of how tall he is, how close. How warm the air feels between your bodies despite the cold river.

“You really thought I wasn’t going to do anything?” he asks.

Your heart beats faster.

“Well…” you murmur, trying to hold your ground, “you usually don’t.”

“You’re impossible,” he breathes out.

“And you're annoyingly boring,” you retort playfully.

“Gods help me,” he murmurs.

Then his hand lifts.

Big, rough fingers brushing lightly against your jaw, almost hesitant for half a heartbeat and he studies your face like he’s giving you one last chance to pull away.

You don’t.

Your lips part slightly.

That seems to be all the answer he needs.

Dunk exhales a trembling sigh, and finally, he leans down.

When he kisses you, it isn’t hesitant the way everything else about him has been. It’s warm and certain.

The kind of kiss that feels like something long overdue finally happening.

Your fingers curl instinctively against his chest, water shifting around you both as you lean into him, relishing in his taste, in his lips.

Dunk groans against your lips and his big hands explore your body with a wild desperation, one tangling in your wet hair, gently pulling to tilt your head, while the other slides down your wet back until it cups your bum with a firmness that makes you breathe out a muffled gasp.

“Tell me t–to stop,” he pants in between hot kisses, his warm breath clashing with the icy water that laps at your lower body. “Tell me to stop, my love, and I—I will.”

“Don't—don't stop. Take me, Dunk, oh please, just fuck me,” you cry out, clinging to his neck with your arms and pressing your bare breasts against his firm chest.

Dunk doesn't need to be told twice. He lifts you with astonishing ease, forcing you to wrap your legs around his waist. He holds you with one arm under your thighs, as if you weigh nothing, as his other hand roams your body, exploring every curve he had previously only dared to sneak a peek at. His rough fingers brush your waist, bringing a sigh from you that he devours with another kiss, one that is wilder and hungrier.

You feel his hard, demanding manhood pressing up against you through the water. Dunk buries his face in the crook of your neck, kissing and nibbling you so hard you arch your back.

“Not here,” he hisses, his voice cracking with excitement. “The water’s too fucking cold.”

Still holding you, he emerges from the river with heavy, steady steps. Water drips from your bodies as he carries you toward the shore, and he stop at the grass and carefully sets you down on it.

As he takes his place above you, he covers your body with sweet kisses, lingering for a few precious moments to worship your breasts.

“Seven hells,” he groans, his body trembling with arousal as he watches your eyes roll back and your back arch for him. “You’re so beautiful, I’ve spent so many nights dreaming of this, you have no idea—fuck.”

He just won't stop talking sweet praises to your body as he covers it with kisses, sucks, and nibbles.

“So beautiful, so delicious, all for me, hm? You’re a dream. My dream.”

When his fingers reach your sex, already drenched by more than just the river water—and wetter than it at this point—you squeal out a little yelp that is lost in the forest and has him breathing heavily.

Dunk takes his time, savoring all of your reactions, tracing slow, purposeful circles that have you begging for more, arching your back off the grass.

“Did you just say something about me being boring?” he teases, his blue eyes burning with a new and dangerous self-confidence as he reaches down to kiss one of your knees, making himself a place in between them.

“Shut up and just get in already,” you whine out, one of your feet impatiently tapping against his backside to make him hurry up. “I’ve been ready for you for months, Duncan.”

You settle yourself more comfortably on the grass, drawing him closer to you with your legs wrapped around his hips. As he finally aligns himself with your pulsating, eager cunt, you feel him hesitate for a moment, awkwardly searching for the right angle in a way that is incredibly endearing, before he manages to find his entry into you.

He stays still for a moment, just as the head of his cock is stretching out into your wet folds, merely feeling your warmth, how you hold him tight and wrap around him from inside. It's a moment of pure lack of experience, where he doesn't know whether to move, how hard to push, or how to even breathe.

You help him, gently rolling your hips, urging him to thrust deeper, and Dunk stutters out a whimper, beginning to move on your lead.

His thrusts are gentle, tentative at first, and he watches your face closely, afraid you will show any sign of displeasure or disapproval. Every time you make a sound, he pauses for a moment, kisses you with an overwhelming tenderness, and then continues, growing more confident as he goes.

“Like this?” he shudders, as he leans down over you, his hips delivering a particularly deep thrust that knocks the life out of you. “Do y–you like it like t–this, m’lady?”

“Y–yes, Dunk, just like that, deeper... don’t stop,” you tell him, digging your nails into his broad shoulders, feeling his muscles tense under your grip. “You’re doing so well, so big...”

Encouraged by your sweet praises, he picks up the pace, and even though his movements are a bit uncoordinated, there's an earnestness in his passion that trumps any expert lover.

His big hands reach down to support your hips firmly, holding you, as he learns along the way how to give you the maximum amount of pleasure. He's clumsy, he's intense, and he's absolutely perfect.

“Dunk, don't—don't stop, keep going, p–please,” you whimper, and he obediently thrusts again with the determination to bring you over the edge.

The finish comes really fast, an overload of sensations where he, unable to hold it in any longer, loses himself in the rhythm, crying out your name like it's a prayer. Your body is still shaking, and every time you shut your eyes tight, you keep seeing him, sparkling like stars in a night sky.

His cock goes all the way into your womb, painting your gummy, fluttering walls with his color and filling you up to the brim, seed gushing out of your clenched cunt and oozing down your inner thighs.

Duncan collapses on top of you, seeking solace in your embrace, burying his face in your neck as his breathing gradually steadies, still whimpering incoherent words and crying out your name with a broken voice.

He is still deep inside you, throbbing and still spurting drops of seed, but he hurries to prop his elbows on either side of your head so as not to crush you with his nearly seven-foot height.

His fingers, still intertwined with yours on the grass, tremble slightly.

“Are you... are you okay?” he eventually asks in a croaky whisper, with such genuine concern that it almost makes you laugh. “Did I hurt you? It’s just... seven hells, I’ve never... I just didn't know how to make it last longer. I was too... I couldn't think about anything else but you”

“It was perfect, Duncan,” you soothe him, raising a hand to caress his damp cheek. “You're perfect”

He releases a sigh of relief that seems to come from deep within his lungs and leans his forehead against yours, closing his eyes.

“I was afraid of being... I don't know, too rough. Or too clumsy,” he admits with a sheepish smile.

He squirms a little, still feeling the intimate connection between your bodies, and a new rush of heat begins to climb up his neck. He looks so adorably clueless in the afterglow, not quite sure whether to stay like this or find something to cover you with.

“Do you think the gods will be angry?” he abruptly asks, rising enough to look down at you as if the closest thing to a god around there, is you. “For being a knight and... well, this.”

You giggle softly and pull him by the neck to give him a quick, sweet kiss on the lips.

“I think the gods have more important things to do than spy on a woman and her man in the middle of the woods, Dunk.”

When you speak in such possessive terms, he blushes once again, his smile quivering bashfully before he leans his head in closer to you and kisses your lips lovingly.