🕯Hello Lovie🕯

You turn the phone face-down and go pace around your bathroom, reorganizing your serums and SPF and cleansers and vitamin C and retinol and then you hear the phone vibrate from your bedside table and you're striding back.

» don't need to be sorry

» Well, then, thanks. better?

» better

» trust you got home ok then

» I did. Even took the highway

» good to hear

» you should ask security to walk you to your car any time past 5

» they'll do it no questions asked

» Oh I finish before 5. you just caught me in two extenuating circumstances lol

» made me look that word up

» lol sorry

» what'd i say bout that

You set the phone down. Lie flat on your back on your bed and breathe out a giant shrill exhale. Drag your hands over your face in multiple repetitions. Shake your head over and over. Processing. Processing.

» are you about to say it again

» 100%

» cute

» finish at 7 tomorrow. let's grab something after

» ok sounds good. have a good night

» cheers

—

Sasha debriefs you; she'd felt bad about revealing your secrets, so with John and Kyle, she'd pivoted to some question about integrated webcams instead while you were hiding in the washrooms. "Secret's safe with me," she'd smiled and apologized.

You debrief Sasha. She slaps your shoulders and upper arms until you push her away laughing to defend yourself.

She grabs a piece of paper and pen.

what we know

name G_02

sees you maybe daily or weekly - passes you or vice versa

seen your cubicle

knows your full name or enough to message you

has access to company chat

possibly G for ghost

possibly G for garrick (??)

possibly others

Sasha taps the pen against her lips. "Easy enough. Let's strike out a few of these." Opening the chat app, she uses the search user feature to eventually find Kyle Garrick.

"Hm, his username is just KG though."

"Okay, look for Simon."

"He has an account. They must assign them to everyone. Username SR."

"Fuck me. This person managed to make their name slightly different than the usual nomenclature. An IT person perhaps?"

A few hours later, you're on your own, wandering through the floor to find an HR officer for a pay question on your file. Your eyes eliminating pods of cubicles as you go. "Oh! Hey."

Kyle squinting and tabbing between a set of two monitors, a pair of 1950s style glasses propped on the edge of his nose. At your voice, he glances up in surprise. A big smile curling up. "Heya! How's it?" He leans back in his chair and pushes the glasses up over his hair. "You need some help?"

"No, no, I was just on my way to grab someone from HR, and wandered through. Still getting used to the maze."

He stands, adjusting his relaxed summery pants, grabbing at his glasses and laying them on the desk. "Let me join ya. Today's doin' my head in. Need a break anyway."

"Oh, sure," you smile. "Do you know Una? That's who I'm looking for. I thought they were around here…"

He laughs easily and surprising you, sets his long fingers at the tops of your shoulders and spins you around so you're facing the opposite direction. "Thatta way. Hate to break it to ya, you're not even close."

He shoves his hands in his pockets and stays beside you, close, his elbow brushing the bare skin of yours when he needs to pinch in to make room for someone else passing. "You know, you were pretty noncommittal the other night, about the next cinq à sept." His elbow brushes yours again even though there's no reason.

"I'm not a big drinker," you deflect.

"Don't need to be. Just come out and have some fun with us. Easy, yeah?" Your eyes slide over to his and he's looking down at you, a warm smile on his face and a little wink in his eye.

You reach the area with clear Human Resources signage. "Well, here y'are. Now y'owe me a drink," he winks again and lopes off, cool as a cucumber always.

—

You decide to work late today and just wait at the office for 7; feels unfair to go home and get ready before drinks when he'll be getting off and still in his uniform.

You're fiddling with your phone in the lobby when you hear a ding. You've been trying not to glance up, but your eyes won't listen, and then you see black boots thud out of one of the freight elevators tucked off from the bank of regular elevators. Simon in his uniform, long thick legs striding out calmly, a plastic water bottle crinkling in his big hand.

"Hey," you say brightly, and all of a sudden, this feels very much like a date.

Simon gives you a small smile, chucks the water bottle in the nearby garbage (not recycling, just one bin over), and says, "Y'alrigh'?"

"Yeah, good, thanks. You?" You shiver as he ushers you out the main door. You give a small goodbye and nod to the front desk security guard. Simon calls them by name and gives a more personal goodbye.

Outside, the air is humid but there's a breeze pushing your dress against your legs, keeping the worst of it at bay. "Do you wanna walk somewhere? Or we can take my car, or—?"

"Too hot to walk," he says calmly. "Take my truck an' keep yours here f' now."

"Okay." You walk quietly around the back of the building to his lot. He opens the truck door for you, which has your stomach twisting like crazy, and all you can do is give him a tiny smile and a thanks before climbing in.

You have a few seconds of unwitnessed time to glance around the cab of his truck without him in here. Surprisingly tidy. Not clean, either. Smells warm and sweaty, trapped heat over a long July day, and a faint smokiness. You watch as he comes around the front of the truck and hauls himself in, a slight something on his face.

"You have a sore back?"

He lets out a laugh-adjacent huff. "Years of sore back. Old injury never properly healed, an' heat makes it flare up."

"Ouch."

He flicks on the air conditioning and fiddles with the vents, leaning over a little more into your space to adjust yours. "That good?"

The air is cold and instantly soothing on your hot cheeks and neck. "Yeah. Yeah, perfect, thanks."

"Don't start apologizin' again."

You laugh self-consciously and play with the strap of your bag in your lap, crossing your legs. "No promises."

He makes a small humming sound.

Very quickly, he's pulling into a parking lot of an Irish pub. You go to open your door and he makes a soft noise, so you leave it hanging so he can come round and open it fully. You laugh at him for how silly it is, and he doesn't say a thing. You get ushered into the pub, and sat right away at a booth by the window.

It's dark, quiet, and very, very air-conditioned.

You order a whiskey ginger and he gets a coffee. "Oh, are you…sorry, I shouldn't have assumed we were drinking."

He makes a pinched face at your sorry. "I'll join you shortly. Just don't wanna be too tired."

"We could have rescheduled…"

His eyebrows dart down like he doesn't follow. "Why would we do that?"

"If you're tired."

He chuckles softly. "'m always tired. Nothin' that coffee can't fix. 'sides, wouldn't cancel on you."

Heat pulls through you, snaking and slippery. "Well, let's just hope there aren't any more emergencies that you need to babysit me for."

Another confused face. "Babysit you? What'd'ya mean?"

You watch as his mouth forms over the ceramic lip of the coffee mug and takes his first sip. You mirror with your sweating glass of whiskey and ginger ale, with extra ice.

You laugh. "Do I need to explain it?"

"Nah, I know where you're drivin' but s'not it. Bit of shit luck, is all. You weren't losin' the plot or nothin'."

The drink is sweet and sour and you take a much deeper sip. Preparing yourself. "I can't tell if you're annoyed by me."

His eyebrows raise high. "Y'havin' a laugh?"

"No."

He folds his hands, tattooed down to his knuckles, around his coffee mug and stares at your drink. Not you. Your drink. "Think I'd hang 'round if I didn't want to?"

You've misstepped. Might as well make it a fuckin' dance. "Well, the last two times were against your will."

"You think so?"

"Well…courtesy, at least."

"'What're you doin'." It's spat out plain.

"What?" You take a desperate drink.

"All this. Feels like you're tryin' to tell me the ways I shouldn't'a helped you."

This tête-à-tête has you all circled up around, tangled in your own dumbass thoughts. You sigh heavily and pick at your thumb polish. "I dunno anymore. I'll just be transparent then. I've been getting weird messages at work. I can't figure out who it is. They hint that they know me, see me. Their, uh, initial. Is the letter G."

You lead him to the trough to drink, but can't say the words aloud that someone called you G and I think or thought it might be you so you just watch as he processes the information slowly, like a meal, until he gets there.

"Ah. S'bit weird." He sips at his coffee. "Someone doin' all that."

"Yeah. I thought so, too."

"D'ya need me to say it?"

"Ah," you laugh, cheeks inflamed. "I don't think so."

There's amusement lurking in his honey-brown eyes. "S'not me. Not my style."

What is your style? How would you show a woman you like her? How would you seduce her? What does it look like when you like someone?

"Well, thanks." You smile into your drink, playing with the edge of your serviette. You feel his boots all of a sudden under the booth, legs spread wide, a toe touching the edge of your sandal. You don't move your legs and you don't look at him.

He finishes his coffee quickly. Orders a Newcastle brown. You both order fish and chips — he assures you it's good here — and you ask how long he's worked for the company, when he moved here, until he nudges you back to the hot seat.

"Got any suspects in mind for G?"

You tap the fork against your mouth, a little loosened by your drink. "Not really. It was you or another guy, but honestly, it could be anyone. Could just be someone's idea of a weird prank."

"Who's the other guy?" He doesn't make eye contact, just breaks apart the fish fillet with his fork, head down.

"A guy in IT, Kyle. I met him yesterday for the first time. Last name starts with a G," you explain.

"I know him. Cool bloke. Think you want it to be him?" A long drink from his tall glass of dark ale. Eyes flickering over you, not touching down anywhere solid. Too casual.

"I don't know how to feel about any of it," you demur.

He nods.

When the bills come, he pays for you, ignoring your soft protest, and gets you to package up your leftovers to bring home. You hold it in your lap on the ride back to the parking lot; your car, alone once more. He leaves the truck running, cold air streaming out across your rippled skin, letting his big hands rest on his bigger thighs. He picks off a fleck of something.

"Simon."

"Yeah."

Your eyes slip from his thighs up to his face, his profile in the dusky light, the blue interior lights of the dashboard. "You promise it's not you?"

Quickly, his eyes meet yours. "Yeah, promise."

"Okay."

You set your container up on the passenger dashboard, tucked under the windshield, the corner squeaking. You unclick your seatbelt. You slide off your bag to the floor. You turn to him squarely, eyes mapping his face, and when you see the wary hunger in his eyes, you lean over and kiss him on the mouth.

His mouth is slow to move, his hands suspended off his thighs, nowhere to set them down. You wonder when he was last kissed.

You pull your lips off his with the tiniest smile, and lean down to grab your bag. Container in other hand. You open the passenger door before he can react, before his body can shift to anticipate your move.

He meets you in the space between your parked vehicles. You're about to make a pithy teasing joke, but then, in silence, he's grabbing your container and setting it on the roof of your car, bag with it. He doesn't look at your face long, can't hold your gaze, but his hands are tunneling into your hair and scooping your face up, tilting you so he can drive his mouth down on yours. This time, his tongue meets yours hungrily, no longer dazed, like you've awoken something dormant. His mouth is soft and flavoured strong with yeast and malt and coffee, and it tastes right to you. When he string a moan out of you, it spurs his own sounds; big silent man keeping them all to himself.

He presses you up against your car, molding your back over the sun-hot glass and metal until you hiss, and you both laugh a little, so he switches your back to the truck instead. His hands move desperately across your shoulders, collarbone, down your arms and elbows to your hands, which are roving over him, then down to your hips. When you wriggle and moan, his hands scoop further down until he's cupping your ass cheeks and hauling you up against him, the press of canvas and hard muscle underneath scratching against your soft skin and thin summer dress.

"Fuck me," he mutters into your damp throat. "S'not fair."

"What?" You wind your arms around his shoulders and neck, carding your fingernails over his buzzed head. Breathless, kissed stupid, kissed right.

"Not fair to be this fuckin' soft."

You couldn't say what comes over you except standing on the precipice of summer-soaked lust, but you knot your legs around his waist so he doesn't need to use his hands to hold you. You grind desperately against him, any part you can feel, a deep groan winding out of you as his arms band tight around your sweat-damp back. "Oh my god," you pant.

"What?"

"You're so…" and you got nothin', so you just mold your mouth against his again, hoping your tongue against his teeth will tell him what you can't put into words. "I wanna get in your truck."

It takes maneuvering. Big guy. You. Seat reclined, steering wheel pushed back in, water bottle tossed into the backseat. You unbuckle his dirty notched belt and he gasps when your fingers graze over his fly.

"You sure?" His voice has a funny tone. "Been workin' all day. Probably smell rank."

You smile down at him. "I don't think I'll mind." You shove his pants down with his help, and then pull his achingly hot cock out of his precum-damp briefs.

Both of you inhale sharp when you finally get your hands on it, so silky and darkened with rushing blood. Already, the air smells ripe with him and you could siphon it into your bloodstream and get drunk on it.

"God, you're so fuckin' hot," you breathe out without meaning to, laughing incredulously. You catch the look on his face at the last second, eyes almost too focused on his lower half. "You don't believe me?"

He doesn't nod, doesn't shake his head, and his eyes finally fix on yours for the first time. Needing to figure you out.

You flutter your dress hem up, reach down and pull your underwear to the side, and align yourself over the head of him. "You don't believe me?" You stroke down, sheathing him in inches, a slow descent designed to make him gasp and buck. You're successful. "I wanted you to be G. But — oh, shit — I didn't want you to be that type of guy. Fuck. I don't like games. I don't want—" a sharp gasp ripping out of you as he bottoms out "—someone who treats me like that."

His big arms band around you again, pulsing you right in place over his cock, his eyes shuddering closed tight, an almost pained expression over his face. Despite the cold air of the truck cab, you're both sweating now.

"And I don't want Kyle," you moan raggedly, staring down at him, angling to get friction against your clit as his cock slides hotly. "Not my type."

"No?" Not doubtful anymore. Awed.

You shake your head, and his cock strokes just right and you let out a squeak, your fingers clamping over his neck. "No. No. Not him. Not him at all."

"Tell me."

"I like you."

A thumb jagging over your clit under your crooked dress. "Yeah?"

"Yes." A cry. Moan. Warning sign.

He groans. "Like you."

"You like me?"

"Thought it was obvious. Fuck, Jesus Christ, oh m—"

A disgustingly wet, desperately-held-together kiss that seals you both as his orgasm overtakes him, washing him away, his hips slamming up into yours sloppy and fast, but his thumb still rubbing hard and right until yours has you clenching him so tight that he lets out a loud mangled noise that sounds almost anguished.

Cum pools hot. Flesh squelches wet and sticky. Sweaty skin needs to be peeled away from sweaty skin carefully. Both of you, destroyed and sweating and panting.

His hands then: roaming up your open thighs and bent waist and hanging breasts until he's bringing your face down to his for a deep, surprisingly tender kiss. When you finally pull away, his eyes are liquid-soft.

—

You skip the next cinq à sept.

Sasha finally pesters you into coming to the first one in August. It's the same-ish crowd as last time; you now require far less introductions, finding it easier to chat with most folks now. No longer clinging to Sasha as your party guide.

A spicy margarita in your hand, you wander around a bit more freely, and end up spotting the IT guys. You wave as you pass, and Kyle makes a gesture to grab you for a moment.

"Hey," you smile.

"Y'alright?"

"Yeah, great. Busy with the new slate of projects, but good. I think I've got my sea legs now," you laugh easily.

"Aw, that's great news." He drinks lazily from a bottle of beer. "No IT issues lately?"

You shrug. "Uh, nope? Not that I can think of. Nothing that wasn't resolved ASAP, anyway. Your team's good at that."

A strange expression sours that beauty. "No messages?"

Sinking. Sweat, immediately, and the sinking feeling in your stomach. "What do you mean?" Sasha told you she'd never revealed your situation.

He winks, those baby brown eyes lined with long gorgeous eyelashes. "G_02's been pretty quiet these days then."

Your mouth drops open.

He laughs breezily. "Sorry about all that. Bit of a silly idea that grew into somethin' else after drinks with Johnny one night. Just wanted to impress the new cute girl."

"Uhhh…"

The outdoor patio's crowded and you look around the clusters of people. Sasha's nowhere in sight.

"Didn't mean to freak y'out, love. Just some funny games, y'know?" The smile slips every so infinitesimally.

"Got your drink?" Coarse and quiet and steady, coming through the crowd. Simon in his uniform, joining you now that he's done for the night. Sidling up next to you, back looking extra stiff this evening, glass of beer in his hand. "Alrigh'?"

"Yeah," you smile up at him, wrapping your arm loosely around his waist, tucking your thumb under his belt. Ignoring that in your peripheral vision, you can see Kyle's expression registering and rearranging itself into something different.

You give Kyle the brush-off smile, the precursor to saying goodbye. "Yeah, I'm not big into games." Could be about poker. Trivia night. A video game he's trying to explain. "Terrible at 'em."

Simon's arm around your shoulder, his large hand massaging the knot out of your joint nicely.

You wanted to get up to finally rinse.

To feel like a person again.

But his calloused hand came down flat on your hip the moment you moved, before your knee had even cleared his leg.

"Where?" is all he managed, voice wrecked and low and gravelly with sleep, the word barely fully formed on his tongue.

"I'm disgusting," you complained, a whisper.

"Mm." His thumb moved across the jut of your hipbone, finding crust of himself there. His eyes hadn't opened yet. The corner of his mouth had, though, dragging up at one side. "Yeah… y'are."

"I'm glad you're happy with yourself," you huffed sleepily.

His hand kept going, palm dragging down over your hip and around the back of your bent thigh, and then up again into the real mess of you, fingers finding where you were still half-open and swollen from last night, slipping through the sticky wet, the pad of his middle finger circling your sensitive entrance. It was too much and not enough at once — the drag of him over flesh that hadn't settled, a wince folding straight into something hotter, your hips pushing into his hand.

He made a sound; pleased, throaty, his brows pulling in for a second.

"Look at that," he murmured against your temple. "Bet you don' even wan' it cleaned up, do you?"

"Shut up," you half-heartedly murmured.

"Mm-mm," he protested.

Then he rolled, the whole heavy heat of him coming over you in one move, knee shoving your thighs apart before you'd even agreed to anything, and the air between your bodies went humid and ripe, his chest sticking to yours, the dense hair on it dragging over your tender nipples. And your body answered him — thighs falling open the rest of the way, some primal part of you glad of his weight, glad to be pinned under it, glad he was solid and here and breathing on you. He braced up on a forearm and looked down at you, cyan eyes cracked open and bloodshot, lashes still gummed together. He looked like hell. But so did you, you were sure, and he was staring down like you were the best thing he'd ever seen.

He spat into his own hand without breaking from your eyes, crude, and reached down between you to slick his cock with it. You spread more open for him, your hands coming up to his back where sweat was gathered at the base of his spine.

He sank all the way in on the first stroke, stretching your sore walls, an obscene wet crackle of air pushing out to make room for him, Your whole body remembered him in one shoved open rush. He dropped his forehead to the side of your neck and let out a long breath through his nose.

"Four months," he rasped, almost to himself, the syllables coming apart as they fell. "Four months this was the only thing in my fuckin' head." Then, against your mouth, the gravel coming back into it, his throbbing cock bumping your cervix, your nails scrabbling over his sweaty skin for purchase: "That's it, dove. You can take it. You can take it, look at you, you've had worse than this off me."

You could hear his grin.

"Since last night?" you managed to get out. "Or— generally?"

A huff against your lips, almost a laugh, his hips not stopping. "Both."

He fucked you like he hadn't slept it off at all, like four months of going without you had only stored it up, his cock dragging thick and deep through the wreckage he'd already made of you. Every push of it pressed the sweat-slick of his furry belly against your clit so you got it both ways at once, inside and out, until your spine wanted to leave your body.

He talked the whole time — clipped, half-swallowed, filth pouring out of him like silver.

"Feel that," he asked. "That's last night still in you, that is. Didn't go anywhere." His teeth caught your jaw, dragged, overgrown beard scratching at your skin. "Gonna add some more to it." A deep grind of his hips that pushed the breath out of you. "Was lying there, every night, in the dark thinking about this. You under me, made a mess of, soaked through and still begging for more. Had to think about something else quick or I'd've embarrassed myself." His mouth is in your ear, hot and foul. "Four months of that. And now here you are. Wetter than the inside of my own head."

"John— you're so—," you couldn't get anything else out before he'd angled up and a moan tore out of you instead.

"Gross? Annoying?" he offered, hips snapping now, the bed knocking the wall, his hand slipping between you and the mattress to cant your cunt to his liking. "Yeah. And yet you're clenched down on me like you've never been happier. Funny, that."

It built faster than it had any right to. You'd stopped being able to do anything but hold on — one hand fisted in the wet sheet, the other clamped to the flexing muscle of his ass, your heels skidding down his back for purchase that wasn't there, every thrust knocking another broken little sound loose from a throat you no longer had any say over. And when you came you spasmed around him with your nails dug into the meat of his shoulders and your mouth open on a noise you'd have been embarrassed by if your brain hadn't been simmered down and reduced to nothing. He cursed and pushed his face into your throat and licked the salt off it, tongue flat against the tendon, groaning into your flesh as you fluttered and squeezed and dragged him over the edge with you.

He spilled deep with a groan you're not sure you've ever heard from him before, and then stayed there. Heavy. Crushing. His heart going hard against your chest, his breath sawing at your collarbone. Neither of you moved — both of you a single disgusting glued-together animal. Roadkill, maybe.

Underneath the slowing wreck of your own pulse, the feeling you'd been fending off since he walked through the front door finally claimed you — he was home. Your throat went tight, and you turned your face into his damp hair so he wouldn't catch the sound that squeezed out of it.

He exhaled a warm gust against your throat, then he dragged his lips to the corner of yours and kissed you — sloppy, tasting of sleep and salt and the both of you mixed past telling each other apart.

It was a fucking joke.

"Unhelpful," you'd moped, hanging up on the customer service agent while they were trying to interest you in some buyer's protection service.

Walking into your little kitchen to see a tall, dark, and handsome man sitting at your kitchen table. Introduced himself as John.

You meant to call the cops, of course, but then he disappeared through your walls only for you to find him stretched out on your bed, smiling with a self-satisfied smirk. "You can ring whoever you fancy, but it won't make a lick a difference, sweet'eart. S'your doin' that brought us here."

—

The psychic called the cops on you when you tried to bang down her door. Your emails and calls and negative reviews didn't move the needle.

—

And you know, for a ghost, he was so reasonable. If he wanted to, he could make your life a living hell. He'd see to it personally and would never lose sight of his mission were he to actually do it.

All he wanted — and it was so generous of him not to ask for anything of you — was to live in your house together and just be a happy family. All he wanted, really, was to bury himself into your "child-bearing hips" and fuck the bad attitude out of you. Fuck you into a sweet, pliable thing for him to keep.

"I'm not your fucking wife, you psycho." You'd broken enough things trying to chuck them at him; the only thing that you used now were words, and even then didn't budge him. A fortified wall of a man, constantly amused eyes that knew better, could see from an advantage point that you couldn't.

You tried killing him. A lot. Got creative with it too, but then it became an exercise in avoiding the FBI's interest for your increasingly unhinged research.

"I really hope you were killed. I hope it hurt. I hope you fucking suffered."

You tried showing him different women, ones online who said they really wanted to be fucked by a ghost!, but it was like trying to trick a wolf by throwing a fake stick. You were caught in his teeth.

So you fucked off all the time, staying out as late as possible at the bars, bringing home people to fuck. Didn't work; John scared them off.

S'alright, darlin', I know you just need to get this out of your system

He would say the worst things while his thumb was jammed down your mouth, piecing apart your lips so he could imagine his cock there. Just need to fill this mouth with me to keep you quiet and happy, hm? The worse it was, the harder you came, and a man like him did not miss the connective tissue between the two.

Bit of a party girl, y'are, darlin'. Can't be carryin' on like this when you're a mum.

Lucky you, inheriting (or summoning, according to him) some fuck-ass backwards ghost that wanted you barefoot and pregnant. These hips, good Christ, they're made to take me.

No matter that you had an IUD; John kept throwing out your pills. No matter that whatever the fuck came out of his dick couldn't knock you up, the idea buzzed in his stupid-ass head too strong to listen to actual reason.

Likes to pile drive you into your mattress, smiling down at you all condescending, not really caring if you get off from it, but liking when you come extra hard anyway. His cock stroking all the way deep, deep enough that you punch at his shoulder — "fuck, that fucking hurts!" — until he laughs dark and low, and eventually seizes up and releases whatever that substance is inside you. Feels like cum.

Then there's the crux of the fantasy: he grabs your pillows, and stuffs them under your huge ass so your wide hips are propped up in the air.

Good girl like that, let Daddy's spend do its thing made even more disgusting and potent by his tongue laving around your pussy, never lapping it up, but cleaning the area. Pushing it in deep with his two fingers until you slap and grapple at his wrists with a furious orgasm.

His ring finger, banded.

Yours, matching. Slipped on in the night.

Don't worry, sweet girl. It'll take.

The research stops being fun after a certain point and doesn't help your case.

You've got a leering Scottish dude as a clingy ghost, constantly pressing his big boner into your ass or between your legs. Look, at first, the novelty of it was fun. But when you've got work in the morning, waking up with a cock sliding into your ass and a och dinnae mind me hen jus need to blow off steam against your neck and now you've got to hop in the shower in the middle of the night because you got…ectoplasm? running out of your asshole.

Can't be banished. Can't get closure because Johnny just wants a fun time and someone to party with. He's pretty confident he died in the toilets at a nightclub that closed down in 1989. "Shame, many a night with my heid in a girl's fanny there."

He never leaves your side. Never content to stay back at the apartment or do his own thing, never too curious about the world around him. Just wants a hole to fuck — yours.

"Ye called me, hen."

There's no escaping him. You can't outrun him, can't trick him, can't tire him out. You could grab a flight to some remote island, and his spectral ass would just accompany you on board.

"Johnny, please," you sob, beyond exhausted after a few years. "I need space. Time. Distance. Anything, please."

His mouth is busy rimming your asshole, lapping and circling desperately, his saliva — yes, he produces it all when he's this close to you for this long, how lucky — running down your crack to your cock.

"Shush, hen," he tuts, licking forcefully until you're buckling, face into the pillow. His hairy hand comes between your legs and begins the slow tugs at your cock, and of course you're already leaking everywhere. Starting to shake under his ministrations.

"Want yer cum, lass. All sweet an' just fer me."

"No," you protest with a long, insane whine as your toes curl and the heat spreads low in your belly, your hips fucking into his tight wet fist. "I don't want to. I just wanna sleep."

He spits on your asshole, loud and gross, and you moan. "Ye cannae sleep if ye haven't gotten tae cum, ye daft girl. Gi'e me yer cum an' ah'll let ye sleep."

He won't. He won't be done even then, his cock never falling asleep. Always hard and angry and throbbing.

He milks your cock harder and you pitch forward, pulling away from his warm corporeal tongue with a shrill cry, and och there she goes.

Your pleas are met with light, snapping laughter, and then his cock is being rubbed against your asshole enough times that you finally shift and wriggle into acceptance: please. He hums graciously like he's doing you a favour, slapping your ass hard and making you buck. "Open wide fer me," he coos as he pulls your cheeks apart for his inspection.

Your brain goes offline at this part, and he takes over completely in his dominating, hyperactive, body-buzz electric way about him.

It can tell if you're not taking it seriously.

"I'm talking about my fiance, dumbass. Wouldn't be marrying him if he didn't. Anyway, your turn!"

—

You tell yourself you could've figured it out if he hadn't shown up the night before the wedding, dressed in a suit.

A stranger with soft brown eyes with a strange glint to them that stole your breath away.

Telling you, You're not going to marry him, honey. That's not the way this is going to work. I'm sorry.

He wasn't sorry; his top lip didn't meet his bottom lip in the right way to sell his remorse. The glint and the feverish look in his eyes seeing you in your bridal gown, trying it on one last time before the morning. He looked like a man deprived.

He was patient when you didn't understand. When you cried and cried, he held you, stroking your hair, the waist of your dress, your pretty mantilla veil. His hands were weak at first, so insubstantial that it scared you, but they got stronger as he roved up your dress.

Your protests were salt-thick.

I know, honey, I know.

Soothing words and petting hands and spoken kindnesses draped over you like their own veil, affixed to you and kept in place over you.

Until he found that that you were a traditional girl in some way; had been waiting for the wedding night. His eyes burned dark and hard, his hands forming into hot irons that molded your flesh apart.

What a beautiful bride

He kissed away your tears, sucked them up delicately with his beautiful mouth. He parted you like the sea, like trembling grasses making way, and slicked himself up. Hushed and crooned in your salt-damp neck about how he's the one that he can take care of you the best, isn't that what you wanted? as his cock rocked into you a little bit, small takings and small pitiful sanctions, making deeper passage.

The loveliest bride a man could hope for. Look at your face, darlin, you're a vision. Those eyes open for me so wide, lookin' at her new husband, eh?

Every time your mouth gaped open, he captured it in a new, hungrier kiss, his skin dragging against yours near the end of it. Swallowed up your crying noises, your gasps and hisses and moans, your pathetic keening sounds when his cock stroked the deepest, pressing against places you've never felt.

S'what a groom needs to do, hm? Make his pretty wife come? Make her feel good and jus' right? I'm gonna take care of you the best. You made sure of it, my wife.

A warm hand settled against your clit and began to rub there, slow and delirious, until he no longer kissed to cover up your sounds; his eyes darkened and seem to glitter as your ragged moans filled the bridal suite. An orgasm rippleed out across you, tight and discordant, frightening you beyond your new reality and you pulled at your husband so tightly that he spilled in you with a harsh groan. Pulsed something in you, then dragged his cock out, spilling more over your bridal gown.

Marked. Taken.

—

A few years later, he asks you to go find the dress in the closet. Wants you to put it on so he can fuck you like you're a virgin again; wants to reenact the taking of you.

There are some bittersweet tears you shed while he achingly glides into you, acting like the pressure is too much and too full and he has to slow down for your sake, remembering your fiance's face. The excitement you felt the night before.

The studio is warmer than you expect. Old brick. Tall windows dripping with rain. Canvases stacked against every wall, most of them turned backward, their painted faces hidden from you. It smells of linseed oil and damp wood and (- the sharp stench of a cave where things lie nestled in the dark with sharp teeth and sharper claws, maw dripping with hunger for every unsuspecting little thing that crosses in front of it’s eyes, too close too see the danger until its dragging them across stone floor- )

(And you’ll think about those canvases later. About how each one had been carefully turned toward the wall before you arrived, how easy it had been to assume this was modesty instead of concealment. Artists are strange, you’d thought. Private about unfinished things. You hadn’t yet considered that there might be things Johnny didn’t want looking back at you.)

Johnny puts you in an oversized white shirt (‘s mine, Bonnie, but ye can borrow it- ), says the fabric catches shadow better. Leaves your own clothes folded on a chair near the door (- farther away than they need to be- ) and settles you on a low platform beneath the windows, your knees drawn loosely beneath you, one hand resting against your throat.

The first few minutes pass in silence.

Charcoal scratching.

Rain needling softly against the glass.

Johnny looking at you, baby blue traveling slowly, steadily, returning to the same places over and over- the soft inside of your wrist, the hollow beneath your throat, the place where the shirt slips away from one shoulder whenever you breathe too deeply.

You try to hold still, but your back starts to ache. Your fingers curl against your collarbone. Each time Johnny looks up, you remember you’re being watched and flinch, shoulders rising, knees pressing closer together, chin sinking protectively toward your chest, too stiff.

His charcoal stills.

You apologize.

Ach, dinnae apologize. He smiles when he says it, but something in his expression stays still. His mouth curves. The rest of him doesn’t.

Ye keep foldin’ in on yourself every time I look at ye. Ahm not goin’ tae eat ye.

It’s too perceptive and your laugh comes out smaller than you meant it to. Johnny’s gaze sharpens at the sound, charcoal held motionless between fingers stained black nearly to the knuckle. He sets the charcoal on the easel tray and walks toward you, wiping blackened fingertips against his trousers.

His hands settle on your shoulders and press them down, thumbs sweeping slowly along the tight muscles beside your neck, working circles into the ache until your head tips forward despite yourself.

(That should’ve frightened you too, perhaps, the ease with which he found the softest part of you and pressed his thumb into it. But cruelty rarely introduces itself as cruelty.)

Can feel ye fightin’ me, he murmurs.

You tell him you’re only nervous.

I know, hen.

His mouth brushes close to your ear when he says it- That’s the problem-

You’ve never done anything like this before. Never sat beneath someone’s attention and been expected to let them take whatever they saw.

Johnny hums.

- Got somethin’ that might help-

He leaves you there and crosses to a cabinet near the sink. The bottle he brings back is already open. Red wine, dark enough to look black where it gathers in the bottom of the glass.

He pours while you watch, the glass filling nearly to the widest part before he seems to remember himself and stops.

You tell him that’s more than a little.

Is it?

The dimples appear.

Scottish measure.

You laugh despite yourself, and that seems to please him. He passes you the glass, waits until your fingers close around the stem, then returns to the easel as though the matter is settled.

It’s sweeter than you expect.

Dark fruit and spice, something thick and jammy that clings to your tongue after you swallow. It warms your stomach on the way down and then sits there, a small red coal beneath your ribs, heavy in your stomach, spreading outward in a slow bloom that reaches your fingertips first.

Johnny starts drawing again once you drink, charcoal moving with renewed purpose, and each time you begin to tense beneath his gaze, he tips his chin toward the glass.

You obey because you don’t want to be difficult (- not after he told you that you were the first beautiful thing he’d wanted to draw in months. Pride and vanity always did come before the fall-)

The first glass disappears without you noticing.

Johnny refills it.

You watch the wine climb the crystal, a dark red tide swallowing the clean sides. He pours generously this time, his wrist turning until the glass is almost full.

Johnny-

Ye’re still wound tight.

He presses the glass back into your hand, cups the base and tips it toward your mouth, red wine spilling over your lower lip, a thin ribbon escaping the corner of your mouth to trail down your chin- Swallow, hen, that’s it, good girl- thumb catching the crimson streak on your chin, smearing it gently across your swollen mouth, bringing his thumb to his own lips and dragging his tongue slowly over the wine stained pad, his gaze still fixed on your (- tasting one thing and thinking of another entirely- )

The room softens, hard corners of the platform blurring, rain beyond the glass stretches into silver threads. Johnny’s face becomes something painted in oils- dark lashes, blue eyes, the warm cut of his mouth- each feature bleeding gently into the next whenever you look too quickly.

(You’ll try to remember how many times he filled the glass after that. You’ll count backward later and find nothing solid enough to hold. One glass becomes two only because you remember him pouring. Two becomes three because the bottle was lower when you finally noticed it again. Memory is unreliable even when sober; drunk, it becomes something else entirely)

Your thoughts begin losing their edges.

That’s the strangest part.

Not the warmth or the heaviness gathering behind your eyes, but the way one thought stops connecting cleanly to the next. You think you should check the time, but the idea floats away before you remember where you left your phone. You think you’re thirsty, although there’s still wine in your hand. You think Johnny has been staring too long, but then he smiles and the concern dissolves before it can settle into fear.

Your brain turns liquid. Loose.

Everything inside your skull has melted into something warm and buoyant, thoughts drifting past one another like pale shapes beneath dark water. You can see them. Almost touch them. But each time you reach for one, the motion sends it farther away.

The warmth moves deeper with each glass. Into your thighs. Your cheeks. The soft tissue behind your eyes.

Nothing has edges anymore. Johnny’s charcoal scratches from very far away, scraping down the back of your mind.

You take another sip.

Your tongue feels too large for your mouth.

The wine sits syrup thick in your veins, turning your body slow and porous. You can feel yourself dissolving from the inside, bones losing their hard white calcifications, thoughts melting down into something warm and red and viscous. Your mind becomes a glass overturned on its side, everything inside it pouring lazily toward the lowest point.

Johnny tells you to lift your chin and it takes you a moment to understand him.

Your head feels full of warm red water. Too heavy for your neck, too light to belong to your body. When you turn toward him, the studio follows a moment later, swaying gently around its fixed point. Your stomach seems to remain behind while the rest of you drifts forward.

Johnny smiles. Feelin’ better?

Mmm. Floaty.

The word leaves your mouth thick and childish. You hear yourself say it from somewhere above the platform and start laughing, embarrassed by the way your tongue seems to have grown too large for your teeth.

Floaty, he repeats. Aye, I can see that.

The glass slips sideways in your hand when you try to lift it again, wine cresting the rim, pouring over your fingers in a slow, dark sheet, slipping between your knuckles and tracing along the inside of your wrist. You make a startled little sound at the coldness that breaks apart into a thousand shards against the brick of the walls.

Johnny catches the stem before it can tumble from your loose fingers- careful, hen- and you try to straighten it but some how make it worse. Another red thread spills across your palm, and your laughter returns, thick and breathless, your head bowing beneath the weight of it.

Can’t hold it, you confess.

Johnny looks at your hand.

His smile doesn’t disappear, the warmth staying arranged across his face, but everything behind it grows watchful and still, his gaze following the wine as it crawls toward the soft bend of your elbow.

Aye, he murmurs. I can see that.

He takes the glass from you and places it beyond your reach.

Then he closes his hand around your wrist.

(There are moments when the body understands before the mind does. A pulse quickening beneath someone’s thumb. Fingers curling uselessly toward the palm. Some small animal instinct lifting its head inside you and finding every door already underwater. Yours tries to warn you now, but the wine has made a soft, red grave of your thoughts, and whatever is screaming has sunk too deep to be heard.)

Johnny raises your hand slowly, turns your wrist upward and studies the dark streaks shining there as though you’ve offered him something.

His tongue touches the center of your palm.

Tickles, you mumble, trying weakly to pull your hand back.

Johnny doesn’t let you, fingers tighten around your wrist, dragging his tongue between two of your fingers, gathering the wine with slow, deliberate strokes, his eyes lifted to your face the entire time, stubble scraping your skin, your head tipping drunkenly toward one shoulder while he follows the spill downward. His mouth moves over the heel of your hand, then the tender inside of your wrist, tongue tracing the dark path until it reaches the quick beat of your pulse.

Johnny, you breathe, his name breaking apart around another shy (nervous) giggle.

Shh.

His lips close over the fluttering place beneath your skin, sucking gently at the flesh, and the laughter catches strangely in your throat.

For a second, the floating stops.

Your eyes find his. There’s no boyish embarrassment there now. No artist’s wonder. Only concentration, calm and proprietary, as if he’s discovered the precise place where you’re weakest and is committing it to memory.

Then the room tips again.

The fear slips away before you can name it.

Johnny lifts his mouth from your wrist. A faint red stain shines across his lower lip, though you can’t tell whether it’s wine or the shape of his teeth pressed too hard against your skin.

Couldnae leave ye all messy, he murmurs.

You smile at him, heavy eyed and grateful.

(That smile will return to you later. Not his. Yours. The soft, trusting curve of your own mouth while he held your pulse between his teeth, already learning how much he could take, could take, could take before you’d realize something was missing- )

His hand slides behind your neck when your head lists toward one shoulder, catching you with a palm spanning the base of your skull, fingers sinking into the soft place beneath your hair, and the strength of him feels like a pillar rising from the black water at the exact moment your feet stop finding the bottom.

You lean into him, body pouring toward the nearest solid thing with the blind obedience of water finding a crack.

(That’s the part you’ll hate most afterward. Not the touch itself, but the relief. The soft, grateful sound your throat makes when he holds your head up for you. The way your body, stupid animal that it is, mistakes restraint for shelter because the room has become a dark and gently turning sea, and Johnny- Johnny, who tipped the bottle into your mouth, who stood on the shore and watched the red water climb over your face- feels like the only thing left that won’t move beneath your hands.)

Can barely hold yourself up, can ye?

There’s laughter curled inside his voice. Warmth too. Enough warmth to blunt the edge of it, enough tenderness painted over the words that you don’t see the teeth beneath until much later, when you’re sober enough to pick each moment apart and find where the sweetness spoiled.

You mumble that you’re fine, word coming loose and swollen, a soft little shape that collapses against his chest before it properly leaves your mouth.

Course ye are.

His thumb moves behind your ear, slow enough to feel fond, presses into the tender hollow there and draws a circle, then another, while your thoughts slosh heavily from one side of your skull to the other.

Jus’ need a wee bit of help holdin’ the pose.

He reaches past you.

Something drags from the shelves, whisper of fibres over unfinished wood, dry and soft, the sound stretching strangely inside your head, unspooling through the wine until it becomes the scrape of something moving beneath a bed, the hush of grass parting around a body.

When Johnny settles back into view, there’s a pale coil resting in one charcoal stained hand.

You stare at it.

The meaning is there- somewhere- can feel it beneath the surface, pressing upward through the wine. But your thoughts are no longer thoughts, drifting pieces of them, each one separating when you reach, each one slipping wetly through your fingers before you can force it into words.

What’s that for?

The question sounds very far away.

Johnny looks at the rope, then at you.

You.

He says it so easily that you blink up at him, chin hooked against the hard planes of his abdomen.

Then his grin breaks wide, dimples cutting deep enough to make the answer harmless again.

The pose, hen. It’s for the pose.

He kneels beside you and takes your wrist, winding the rope around your skin once, then twice, explaining tension and composition and the body’s instinct to protect itself when it tires.

Always curls inward, he murmurs, thumb smoothing the inside of your wrist. Always tries tae hide the soft parts.

You watch his fingers move.

Over.

Under.

Through.

Cream colored rope, the shade of old lace or clean bone, pretty where it crosses your skin, fibres blurring at the edges when your eyes lose focus, becoming something delicate, ornamental. A bracelet. A ribbon. (Gift-wrapped and hand delivered-)

Johnny-

Too tight?

You don’t know.

You should know. The answer ought to exist inside your own head, but your body has gone dim and distant, a house seen through fogged glass. There’s pressure around your wrist. Heat beneath it. A pulse knocking weakly against the rope like someone trapped behind a wall.

Johnny slides one finger under the knot, fingertip stroking over your pulse while he looks up at you, eyes bright and attentive.

Wouldnae hurt ye.

You nod because he sounds so certain and rational thought is a stone tied to your ankle asking you to climb through red waters.

He binds the other wrist before you understand that the first one is finished. Lifts both arms above your head, and your body follows with a slow, boneless obedience that makes him smile. The stretch pulls through your shoulders, arches your back, tits pushing at the fabric of his shirt, body bent sharp enough to split the soft haze for half a second, and a whimper escapes before you can swallow it.

Shh. Easy, bonnie.

His hand slides down your arms, your sides, soothing the hurt he created, and the wine rushes back into the space pain briefly cleared. Warm. Heavy. Merciful.

He secures the rope to an iron ring sunk into the studio floor.

You hadn’t noticed the rings before.

There’s one near either side of the platform, black metal half hidden beneath old paint and dust. More beside the mattress in the shadowed corner, arranged at careful distances from one another.

The pattern should mean something.

(It does mean something.)

Your gaze catches on them and then drifts helplessly away.

(Fear needs a body that answers when called, and yours has become warm wax beneath his hands, softening wherever he presses, cooling around whatever shape he leaves behind.)

Your legs are next.

He cups one ankle and draws it outward. Then the other. Your heels drag over the platform with a soft rasp, your knees falling apart beneath the loose white shirt. The fabric slips higher along your thighs, and the first clean spark of alarm pierces the drunken fog when you try to close them again.

Johnny feels the resistance and his hands stop on your thighs, heat from his palms sinking into you until you can feel his fingerprints burning their marks into your bones.

Easy.

The word is quiet. Almost kind.

You shake your head, but the motion tips the ceiling sideways. The windows pour rain upward. Johnny’s face splits into two softened versions of itself, then swims back together as nausea rolls lazily beneath your ribs.

I don’t-

The sentence knots behind your teeth.

Don’t what?

The words are all there, drifting separately through the dark, but you can’t gather them into the same mouthful.

Johnny leans closer- what was that, doe- gives you every appearance of listening, eyebrows drawn with concern, mouth softened at the corners.

You try again.

Your tongue feels soaked through. Heavy as nebula, the sounds smearing against one another until even you can’t tell what you meant to say.

Johnny waits, watches the effort drain out of your face and only then strokes both hands down your thighs.

Thought so.

The ropes tighten around your wrists. Your ankles. A careful loop above your knee when your leg keeps listing inward, another where the position pleases him but your body won’t hold it on its own.

His hands guide the white shirt higher whenever it catches beneath you.

It’ll wrinkle, hen-

A little farther-

Hold still-

The fabric gathers in pale folds until it rests beneath the curve of your breasts, baring the plane of your stomach, the flare of your hips, your soft, silky cunt he has spread open for himself. His thumbs stroke once along the crease where thigh meets hip, pressing into the give of flesh (- as though he is already imagining how it will feel when he is between them- )

He looks at what he has done and the boyish grin is gone. What remains is quieter. Hungrier. His eyes move over you like he is deciding which part to taste first.

There we are, he murmurs. Much better.

You drift.

Fear is still there, but it has risen above you now, trapped on the other side of the wine. You can see its shadow crossing the surface while you float beneath it, black and frantic and distorted by the red water between you. Your shoulders ache. Your wrists burn dully where the rope takes your weight. Your legs are held apart by pale fibres and Johnny’s careful arrangement, but the body enduring it feels impossibly far away.

A figure at the bottom of a lake.

A pale thing laid open in the silt.

You’re near the ceiling. You’re inside the rain crawling down the glass. You’re suspended somewhere behind your own eyes, watching a woman in a white shirt test the ropes with small, weak movements she won’t remember making.

She looks frightened.

You wonder why she doesn’t leave.

(Drunkenness makes a cruelty of distance. It lets you watch yourself suffer without understanding that you’re the one inside the body. Lets the mind climb out through a crack in the skull and hover somewhere clean while the flesh remains below, warm and obedient and available. It feels almost like escape until you realize Johnny can still touch what you’ve left behind.)

Christ.

The reverence in his voice draws your gaze back to him.

He’s looking at you, eyes moving slowly over your arms lifted and secured, your knees drawn apart, the shirt bunched high where his hands kept moving it, pausing at each point of strain as if pain is another line he’s finally managed to place correctly.

Something in his face has gone still, colder than lust. The deep and emptied devotion of a man standing before an altar built for a god that cannot refuse him now.

There ye are, he whispers, as if you’d been hidden from him, as if the rope has finally uncovered something true.

Then he crosses to the studio door and you follow him with your eyes slowly, the room dragging several seconds behind his body.

Johnny turns the lock and the click enters your head like a stone dropped into deep water. He slides the bolt into place and the sound travels down through the wine and settles somewhere beneath your heart, where the part of you that still understands begins, very quietly, to drown.

Then his hip catches the corner of a canvas on the way back.

It happens slowly from where you’re floating. The frame tips away from the wall, knocks against the one beside it, and then the whole uneven stack begins to slide. Wood scraping brick. Canvas whispering against canvas. Johnny swears beneath his breath and reaches for them, but they have already fallen face up across the floor.

And…

There you are.

Your face.

You blink at it, wondering for a syrupy moment whether it’s the sketch he’s just made, though the woman in the painting is wearing your green coat from last autumn. Her hair is damp, cheek tucked into the collar against the rain. She’s standing beneath the yellow shelter at the bus stop near your work, eyes lowered toward the phone cupped between her hands.

Another canvas has you carrying groceries against your chest. The paper bag splitting at the bottom, oranges bright through the tear, your mouth caught open in a laugh you don’t remember giving him.

Another-

you behind the steamed glass of the little cafe on Bell Street, both hands curled around a mug. There are Christmas lights reflected over your face. Red and gold smears threaded through your hair like something festive and burning.

That’s me, you say.

Or think you say.

(There’s a truth arranged across the floor in front of you, patient and chronological. Months of it. Seasons of it. Proof painted in oils and hidden with its face toward the wall, waiting for the moment when you could no longer count backward clearly enough to understand what you were seeing. But your brain has become a red tide inside your skull, and recognition is a small animal trying to swim through it. You watch its paws break the surface once. Then it sinks.)

When did you- ?

The question dissolves halfway out.

Johnny crouches and turns the first canvas over, handles them gently. (More gently than he’s handled you.) Checks the corners for damage, thumb brushing dust from your painted cheek before he hides it against the wall again.

Clumsy bastard, he mutters.

You stare at the remaining portrait. The one at the corner shop. Washed out lights. Coins scattered across your palm. Your face turned slightly to the side as if someone has just called your name.

- The moment he told you about-

- The first time he saw you-

Except the painting of you at the summer festival last year is underneath it.

Your eyebrows pull together and the thought almost forms.

Johnny looks over his shoulder and sees you struggling there and his expression softens.

Dinnae hurt yourself, hen.

He rises, steps over the paintings and comes back to you. One blackened fingertip presses between your brows, smoothing the crease away as though confusion is another flaw in the pose.

Ye’re thinkin’ too hard.

You try to tell him there are paintings of you. You try to ask how long.

You try to but the words leave your mouth sodden and misshapen, each syllable dragging another behind it until the sentence reaches him as little more than a murmur, the beginning falling away before you reach the end.

Johnny understands anyway. (He always seems to understand you when it suits him.)

He watches your mouth with that same fond concentration he wore while sketching (the patient attention of a man waiting for something soft to finish struggling) then glances toward the canvases he hasn’t managed to turn over.

Did tell ye I’d been stuck for months.

The dimples sink deep.

Never said how long I’ve been working since then.

You look back at the paintings.

The woman beneath the bus shelter has your green coat buttoned neatly with a button that broke last September. The woman at the cafe is holding the chipped blue mug they stopped using sometime around Christmas. Another version of you is walking beneath trees still fat with summer leaves, bare legs flashing beneath a dress buried now at the bottom of your wardrobe.

Your mind touches the sequence and recoils, but there’s nowhere for the thought to go. The wine has flooded every corridor inside your skull, filled every room up to the ceiling. Understanding swims toward you through it- slow, pale, terrible- but each time it comes close enough to recognize, the current rolls you gently away.

Something cold opens inside you, but the wine pours into it before it can become fear. It fills every clean edge, rounds everything off, turns horror into a distant pressure beneath the sternum. Johnny strokes your cheek and waits until your eyes lose focus again.

(He hadn’t found you beneath the lights of the corner shop tonight. Not in the way he’d made it sound, not like lightning or providence or some dead part of him suddenly shocked back into motion. He’d already known which bus carried you home. Which cafe you preferred. What store you used. He’d watched summer soften into autumn around you, watched autumn die into winter, and called it inspiration because obsession sounds beautiful when an artist says it.)

Johnny collects the last canvas and turns it toward the wall and your painted face disappears.

There, he murmurs. Nothin’ tae worry about.

He comes back to you slowly, hands settling on your thighs, hot enough to feel like brands through the wine heavy numbness, heat sinking in around the breadth of his palms and the effortless weight keeping you where he put you.

You shake your head.

Or perhaps it only falls weakly to one side.

Johnny’s mouth brushes your trembling knee, almost gentle, while his thumbs draw slow circles against your skin.

Easy, hen.

You try to tell him you want to go home but all that emerges is a broken little breath.

He lifts his head and watches you struggle to assemble the words, patient until the last of them dissolves behind your teeth. Then he smiles tender enough to make it seem as though he’s forgiving you for being afraid.

(And somewhere above the wine, the small surviving part of you finally understands why the paintings were turned toward the wall.)

Johnny reaches back without looking and the amber lamp beside the platform clicks off.

Darkness folds over the studio, warm and absolute, and his hands tighten around your thighs when the ropes instinctively draw taut.