Concepts In Progress…

“Lovie, I—” the tiny wooden box sits heavier in his pocket. “I don’t know what to tell you.” Hobie rubs at the back of his neck, eyes straying far from your own.

To you he looks guilty.

To him, he’s hiding the surprise from you lest he ruins weeks of work.

“Baby,” you coo, albeit sadly. “I trust you but I’m fucking worried…Whenever I turn the telly on I half expect to see you on it. I’m fucking terrified.”

“I know, ‘m sorry.” Sighing, Hobie tries to swallow the lump in his throat. “‘m safe, you don’t ‘ave to worry.”

“How would I know when you don’t even answer my texts or when you only come home when it’s almost dawn?” Stepping closer, he could see the hurt that he caused right on your pretty face. “I wake up expecting you to be beside me like always but your side of the bed is cold, Hobie. I–I fucking miss you.”

He almost breaks at your confession. “I—”

“Is it me?” Your lips wobbles, fingers trembling on your sides. “Do you not love me anymore?” Voice faltering, tears threaten to pour from your eyes, every heavy thought and doubt you’ve ever had spills over. “Because that I can understand, that I can— It won’t hurt less if–if it is but it hurts more if you found someone else.”

Hobie’s face falls, heart wretched from his chest. “Fuckin’ hell, lovie—” stepping closer, his hands hover over your trembling form. “No, lovie, that— that’s not it.”

“Then where do you go?” You ask, heart broken. “Ten years together, Hobie, you know you can trust me. Are you in trouble? Please, you can tell me, I can help you.”

Hobie drags his tongue over his lips, mouth feeling dry as he hides his hand inside his pocket, feeling around at the wooden box. “‘m not in trouble.”

He contemplates, is all that planning and hard work worth it if all the sneaking around is hurting you? Making you worry for his safety and breaking your heart when he did all of it just for you? He never thought planning a proposal with his best mates to make it perfect was going to hurt you.

“Is it me then?” Your words crack at the edges, inhaling deeply through your nose as you try and fail to act brave. “Do—do you want to break it off?”

Hobie’s eyes are immediately on you, shock marring his face, mouth agape and slightly offended that he’d want to break up with you, you, who has been by his side for a decade, you, who he loves more than anyone else in the whole world.

“Fuck no!” He spits out without a second thought, hands immediately on your face to cradle you lovingly in an attempt to reassure you. Fuck, he never thought that you felt that awful, that you were having those awful thoughts when all those sleepless nights practicing with the band only to come home with you in bed and sleeping soundly made you feel like he has forsaken you. It was the opposite, he thought you were fine and dandy, that you never gave his sudden absence a second thought when he has spent a decade with you and that maybe you wanted some space to yourself too. “Love, no, ‘m not…” he can’t even get the words out because breaking it off with you is so inconceivable for him. “‘m not goin’ to do that.”

“Then what is it? You’ve been pulling away, and— and it’s horrible,” You wipe a fallen tears with your sleeve, choking on your words. “I feel like you don’t love me as much as before.”

“No, I love you, so fuckin’ much.”

“Then why are you pulling away?” You can’t bring yourself to gaze into his soft brown eyes even when your instincts tell you to lean against his touch, to look into his eyes you love with your whole heart. “I’ve spent weeks eating breakfast and dinner all alone, watching it grow cold while I wait for you when we’ve always eaten together. Even Yuri and the others don’t talk to me anymore, you guys are icing me out, I feel lonely, Hobie.”

Fuck it, he thinks to himself, he can’t keep seeing you break like this just because he was too blind to see that his absence was hurting you. He loves you far too much to keep lying and hiding from you. After all, he was doing all that for you, to tell you that he wants to be with you forever even when he already spent ten years with you and he’s more than ready to spend the rest of his days with you. Ten years isn’t enough, he wants you till death and beyond. If you’d still have him that is after the mess he caused.

“Love…” he kneels down like in the movies, not just because it’s tradition but for forgiveness as he watches your face contort into confusion. His hand gets stuck inside his jean pocket, he knew that wearing jeans with small ass pockets will backfire on him someday. “Shit— hold on.” His ring snags around a loose thread. “Fuck, ‘m stuck.” Chuckling nervously, to add insult to injury, he’s starting to sweat profusely.

“What— what are you doing?” Brows knitted together, you tilt to see what exactly he’s doing. “Hobie, you don’t need to kneel, I'm just…” you’re crouching down, helping him get his hand out with your own hands around his wrist. “Baby, just turn your hand.”

“Aha—!” Hobie manages to get his hand out, but he yanks it out too fast, too hurried and from the sheer momentum, his hand accidentally hits you right on your nose. “Fuck! Lovie!”

You tumble to your back, groaning and clutching at your nose. “Shit.” You’re fully laying on the floor, tears in your eyes from the sting. “Hobie…”

“Shit!” He crawls over to you, frantic and panicked as his hands hover around, not knowing what to do. “‘m sorry! I didn’t mean to!”

“Go get some ice.” Voice muffled by your hands, the throbbing pain slithers from your nose to the space between your brows, giving you a dull headache.

“Fuck, ‘m sorry!” Hobie apologizes over and over again while he’s trying to grab an ice pack from the fridge, too concerned for you, too distracted and guilty to notice that the wooden ring box has fallen down and landed right in front of your face. “I’ve got it!” He comes back triumphantly to you holding onto the box with blown out eyes and blood trickling down slowly from your nose down to your shocked lips. “D’you want to open it?”

Your eyes flick over to him whilst you hold onto the box daintily, as if it’ll break from your gentle hold. “Is it for me?”

Hobie’s immediately on his knees, reaching for your chin, using his sleeve to gingerly wipe the blood off of your face. “Yeah, of course.” His voice softens, gazing into your eyes with a smile. “Everythin’ has been for you.”

Realization flickers on your face, reacting too quickly as you wince from the pain.

“Don’t move.” Hobie grimaces, absolutely guilty and embarrassed from the events that unfolded right in the shared living room when he planned a perfect proposal for you that is now down the drain. “I’ll take you to the emergency room, you might have a concussion.”

Your hand takes his cheek, a thumb brushing along his jaw tenderly. “Is this why you’ve been away?”

“Yeah, ‘m sorry. I wanted it to be perfect. Got the band roped into it and everythin’.”

“Hobie…” you coo, inching close, kneeling in between his legs as he leans against your touch. “You know even if you propose to me with a ring pop in bed I would still say yes.”

A soft smile stretches across his handsome face. “I wanted it to be memorable.”

“Well, you’ve made it memorable alright.” You tease, gesturing around your bleeding nose and tears in your eyes.

Hobie chuckles, pulling you close, arms wrapped around you and face hidden in the crook of your neck. “Will you marry this stupid bloke?” He says against your skin, pressing gentle kisses along your throat and up to the hinge of his jaw.

“Absolutely,” you sigh breathlessly, undoubtedly certain about your answer. “Yes, I’ll marry you, Hobie.”

Leaning away, he takes the box and pops it open for you. Heart swelling at your answer, a big smile that etches right on his face, beaming at you whilst he gazes at you with the utmost love. “I love you.”

The ring is simple, silver with three small rubies in the middle. What makes it special is the engravings around it, symbols that represent your years together. His guitar, seashells from the first date at the beach, the three cats you two share, and many more that makes your heart cinch with affection.

“I love you too.” You breathe out, hands shaking as he helps you put on the ring. You could feel his initials and your own right inside it, engraved along the silver band.

His grin seems to light up the whole room, either from your sheer happiness or blooming headache. Either way, you feel like jumping for joy, worries fading away into the wind.

“Can I still show you the surprise? The band’s goin’ to hate me for puttin’ ‘em to work.” His hands run along your sides, eyes flicking down to your lips that smiles at him.

“I’d love to see what you’ve got planned, Hobie.”

Tilting his head to avoid hitting your probably broken nose, he kisses you gently, sweetly and carefully. He reins himself in, and you feel it by how he bunches the back of your shirt with his closed fist that shakes with need.

Hobie pulls away, and you chase his lips, wanting more. “Later, lovie, we need to get to the hospital.”

“Promise?”

His nose nudges at your cheek before pressing a sweetened peck right on it. “Promise.”

One could wonder what he is up to on his device. Maybe Flambae sent another meme at the Z-team group chat that he always denies laughing at. Or maybe he’s watching one of the funny videos you sent him, if he is then he has to go through a dozen of them and they’re definitely not giggle worthy, they’re guffaw worthy because you have carefully curated it to Robert’s funny bone. But Robert has been giggling, annoyingly adorable in fact that you’ve found yourself reading the exact same line in the book you’re reading.

Or maybe he’s giggling because he’s texting someone who is way hotter and smarter than you with better powers— your heel presses against the inside of his thigh and Robert almost drops his phone, a squeak leaving his lips.

“Sweetheart, fuck…” He turns his attention to you, nursing his so-called injury with a slight pout. “What’d I do?”

“Nothing.” You smack your lips together, tongue rolling over the front of your teeth that you know annoys him. His head tilts at you with raised brows. “Just wanted to bother you.”

“You could’ve just said you demand attention, you fucking brat.” He says sweetly, so lovingly as his hand wraps around your ankle, a thumb caressing your heel. “What do you need, sweetheart, hm?”

Your mouth is suddenly dry. “I just have one question.”

“Yes, I can definitely run to the bedroom and get the—”

“Who are you talking to on your phone?” Your brows furrow. “Wait, what?”

“Nothing.” He smiles innocently, cheek pressing against the plush seat. “I’m not talking to anyone.”

“Yes you are, you’ve been giggling nonstop. And I’m sorry to pry but my Robert doesn’t giggle.”

“So I’m your Robert now even when you stabbed me with your foot?” He moves slowly, a hand sliding from your foot and over to your knee then over to your thigh until he’s fully crawling atop you. You don’t waver even when your heart thuds loudly against your ribcage. “You were dangerously close to my groin, y’know. You could’ve killed our future kids.”

Rolling your eyes, you place the opened book on your chest, hiding how your breathing shudders from his hand tracing the length of your side. “I’m not nosy.”

“I know, sweetheart.” He coos, his large palm cupping the plush of your hip.

“You know I trust you.”

“I do know, and I trust you too even though you like reading smut with men built like a brick house.” His head tilts teasingly, eyes flicking at the book on your chest, fingers hitching up the hem of your shirt. “You can just ask, I’m not hiding anything.”

You deflate, relenting with a sigh as your hand moves away a stray strand of russet hair away from his face. “What are you giggling at, Robbie?”

A grin slowly spreads, taking the fallen phone between you as he wakes the screen up with a tap. “This, I was giggling at this.”

Eyes squinting at how bright his screen is, you see yourself on his lockscreen. You’re grinning widely in the picture, face covered in slobber as Beef licks at your face. You remember the day specifically because you’re in your birthday dress, it was taken on your birthday and Beef was giving you your birthday kisses before the party started. Your heart warms at the sight, completely forgetting about your initial worry.

“Oh, Robert…” hand on your chest, you pout, looking apologetically at him.

“Will you ever forgive me for laughing without you?” Chest to chest, he cups your chin in between his index and thumb, looking at you through his lashes teasingly.

“You’re forgiven.” Squeezing his nose, you huff and chase his lips when he leans away playfully. “Robert, I’m sorry. Kiss?”

“Gladly, but first.” He shows you how to open his phone, an act that makes you want to get down on your knees and either pull out a ring or tug at his zipper, either way, he shows you that he trusts you completely and there is nothing to worry about. “Look.” Not only is his lockscreen of you and Beef, but his wallpaper is of you in between him and Beef, both giving you a kiss. “I think it’s perfect now.”

You beam at him, tossing the book and phone on the coffee table as you pull him close, hands on his face and leaning up for a kiss that he smiles atop of.

Every morning his thoughts are immediately on you, purple eyes flicking to the back of your head as you lay beside him, cheek pressed flush against the goosefeather pillow, mouth slightly agape and chest slowly rising and falling with every breath. Aerion would pull you beside him, turning you around so you would face him. You would groan and find his warmth with your face tucked right on his bare chest. He would always seek you out, his great Arryn love that has managed to cleave his chest open and dig yourself into his heart.

Aerion thought you loved him, that you would die for him just like he would for you. But as he stares at you and the Lord of Storm’s End dancing in the middle of the feast with your hand in his, holding so tightly onto the man’s hand like he is your Lord husband not the prince— Aerion’s fury is palpable across the great hall. His fits shake, jaw tightly wound and nose flaring as his anger turns his blood hotter.

Your face is too close to Lyonel’s lips, his breath mingling with yours, his words rumbling in his chest that you could feel reverberate through your body when you’re chest to chest with him. Aerion watches you fall into step with him, a synergy that he thought you and him only ever have.

“Aerion…” his uncle Rhaegel calls for him from the feast table, right beside him is your Arryn aunt as she fails to hide the fear flickering in her eyes. She knows. “The falcon and the stag found each other again, didn’t they?” Rhaegal, sweet simple uncle Rhaegel has even noticed you and Lyonel, looking as if you two belong in each other’s arms. As if it was supposed to be from the start. “The falcon should soar…” he mumbles, picking at the frayed stitches of his doublet. “Dragon blood does not mix well with birds…the falcon’s talons are too long, too sharp, even for themselves.”

“Rhaegel, my love.” The chair under your aunt scrapes loudly as she vaults from her seat, tugging at her husband’s arm. “Let us not frighten our nephew.”

“I am not frightened, dear aunt.” Aerion spits the words out, fists trembling at his side. His wine goblet long abandoned on the table as he stares daggers at his aunt and uncle.

Words hurled at him don’t usually hit him, he has heard worse in his life being a second son of a fourth son. Nothing to inherit, styled to be a spare, a brother to a drunkard, a son to a dead mother, and a father who only looks at him when he has done him a dishonour despite everything he tries to do to bring honour to their branch of the family. He married you for that reason, you’re from a house that is as ancient as his own, an honourable house that has their own great keep and has borne dozens of great warriors. It was for duty, marrying you, he meant to tolerate you, to share your bed whenever he pleases and leave right after. To visit your chambers when duty calls to try for an heir. But you intrigued him, you talked back, you bit back and drew blood. You tamed a dragon, you who is merely a falcon, but you used your talons on him, you learned how to scratch and bite where he wanted, where he needed. His duty became a want, a want to be with you, to share your warmth. And then it became a need, he needed to be beside you, to be inside you, to hold you, to caress you, to hear your breathless gasps underneath him and to see you smile, and for you to seek him out in every crowded room.

He needs you like how a man needs air.

And yet, your eyes gazes into those dark stormy pools of the stormlord like you need him. Like he is the one you married not the man who stands beside his grandsire’s table like a lovelorn fool. He is a prince of the blood, he is the blood of the dragon, a descendant of great warriors and dragon riders. And his heart breaks for a falcon amidst the feast.

Your tender eyes shine underneath the candle lights, palm brushing along Lyonel’s cheek with longing. Aerion’s feet moves before he could think. His strides are long and quick, a man honed in on the pair in the middle of the dancing crowd as he pushes people out of the way. Some part for him when they see the intense look on his face, most scramble with their heads down the moment they hear his loud footfalls, already familiar with the sound that reverberates through the Red Keep.

“My, you two are awfully close.” Aerion keeps his wits beside him, he is furious, and he wants to unsheathe his dagger and plunge the blade right into Lyonel’s neck. But that would start a war, and he is surrounded by the stag’s bannermen, he would be ripped to shreds by the stormlanders before he could have the pleasure of seeing Lyonel’s blood trickle out of his opened flesh. His hand rests upon the handle of his dagger, brow raised, trying to act casual despite his hot red rage thumping inside his ribcage. His eyes are still locked on the contact between Lyonel’s fingers and your skin and you are awfully aware of that fact. “There are other people around, Baratheon. Comport yourself.”

“Aerion.” You startle, fingers unfurling around Lyonel’s hand that he refuses to completely let go as he still holds onto your fingers. “We’re…” you clear your throat, trying to coax a smile out of you as you feel the heavy tension between the two men that are staring at each other like two hunters between the only doe in the whole godswood. “We’re just dancing. This is—”

“I know who he is, my love. He’s in my keep.” His purple eyes keep glancing at Lyonel’s hand that still grasps onto you. He hasn’t raised his voice, and it’s much more terrifying than a yell from his throat. “And he is holding onto my wife.”

Lyonel has the audacity to smile, a smile that annoys the prince to no end. He has only seen glimpses of the Laughing Storm during the Ashford tourney, but his loud boisterous laugh can always be heard throughout the meadow. Aerion wants to cut out that laugh right from his throat.

“All in good fun, my prince.” Lyonel utters his title with hidden disdain, as his hands let go of you, now put up beside his head in mock surrender. “We were talking about the tourney where we met, did we not, my sweet?”

‘My sweet,’ Aerion would cut a lowly man for that if they had spoken to you in that very same manner, in that same tender tone and sweetened gaze. But Lyonel isn’t some stable boy or a hedge knight, he is a Lord paramount, a warrior just like himself.

You gulp down the lump in your throat, eyes flicking between the two men. “That we did.” Lyonel stands a foot taller than Aerion, but if looks could kill, Lyonel would’ve keeled over by now. Their egos clash like lightning against flames. “We were reconnecting, husband, you need not worry.”

Aerion’s steely gaze doesn’t leave the older man’s face. “Come, my love, you look tired.” His eyes turn to you, snatching your hand, fingers immediately weaving around your own possessively. “You must rest, remember what the maester said, hm?”

The prince could see Lyonel’s head tilt curiously from his words right in his peripheral.

Your brows furrow. “And what exactly did he say?” Chortling, you laugh easily, you are no stranger to Aerion’s teasing, nor his manipulation through his words. You just know that his next words would be vengeful but it would just bounce off of you like a pebble against armour like always.

“That the babe, our babe in your belly,” his palm holds onto your stomach, his warmth ebbing from him, searing hot, trying to burn through your gown. “requires you to sit and lay. Not to galavant around like an unmarried maiden.”

Blinking at him, your brows rise to your hairline, shock marring your face with a chuckle in your throat. “The what—” You expected him to spit venom at you and Lyonel, not this. Not an awful lie that gives you an answer to your indecision. Your husband just made it easier to decide.

“My sincere…congratulations.” Lyonel utters through his clenched teeth, monotone, reined in. His eyes turns to you, immediately softening. Aerion knows that look— pity. “I shall leave you be, princess, you must rest. And…” he steps closer, a thumb right on your wrist as you two share a look that Aerion isn’t privy to but wishes he was. “Remember what I told you, hm?” Taking your hand in his, he presses a kiss on your knuckles as his gaze never leaves yours. “My Lady Arryn.”

“My Lord Baratheon…” you answer breathlessly. Watching him leave and disappear into the crowd, taking the remaining air along with him.

My, the simple word shouldn’t get to the prince, it shouldn’t bash right at his chest and break his ribcage into pieces. But it has, you’ve taken his heart in your fist and threw it on the ground, stomping right on it even when it still sings your name. He should be yours and you should be his. But that word, ‘my Lord Baratheon,’ Aerion thinks you were never his to begin with. That you are a stag’s doe, not a dragon’s wife.

Aerion’s heart is shattered by his feet, he wants to take the sharp shards and cut you and himself so you would know the exact pain of seeing you look at someone else with love. He should be the only recipient of that, not some storm Lord that you happen to chance upon before you met him. He will take you to the grave with him if that’s what it takes.

“Come.” Tugging you away, taking your attention away from Lyonel, he leads you outside and into the dim gardens. Your heels clack against the stone, trying to catch up to his longer strides.

The weirwood tree stands tall before him, the wood is stark white, leaves as red as blood as the carved face bleeds crimson onto its bark. Crickets sing, fireflies light the way and the flowers are in full bloom just the way you like it. He knows you love the godswood for its flowers, and sometimes he would join you in your strolls or he would lay upon your lap as you read beside flower bushes, tucked in between the flowers, looking like the maiden of his dreams. But you seem to have come out of his nightmare as you let go of his hand like he burned you with his touch.

“What is wrong with you, Aerion?” You stand underneath the moonlight in his Targaryen colours, looking at him with disgust, not with love. “You embarrassed me, you embarrassed yourself! I have told you, I am not with child—!”

His blade is suddenly in his hand, the sound of it unsheathing stops you in your tracks as he stares at the dagger.

“Are you going to fucking kill me?” You say it calmly, too calmly, as if you have anticipated it long ago. “Try me, Aerion, you know I could hold out my own.” Dress hitched up to your thigh, you show him your own blade tucked into your garter. “I might get that sparring match I’ve always wanted.”

“Do you think of me so cruel that I would hurt you?” His purple eyes are darker here, not even the moonlight could illuminate it. The lingering adrenaline from a fight he didn’t get to have swirls in his belly like wildfire. “That I could kill you? My own wife?”

“You are capable of it.” You spit out with venom on your tongue. “I’ve seen it, Aerion, the cruelty you hide behind those eyes. The cruelty you hide from your father, from your uncles and grandsire. I saw it,” you nod, teeth bared at him. “I saw it when you dismissed Juniper and Andros, I saw it when you broke that poor stable boy’s arm for looking at me too long. I saw it when you plunged a blade into a merchant’s hand when his palm brushed along my own innocently.” Your tone shakes, but you don’t waver. “I saw it during our coupling, the first one on our wedding night. I do not doubt that you are capable of killing your own wife.”

“I could not,” his voice is awfully tender. “This is for him.” Dagger raised, he points at the great hall through the closed doors. “I will cut him, I shall cut him for how he touched you—”

“Gods be good! We were dancing!” Heaving, you step closer, dress still hitched up in case he strikes. “You would know where the hands would be if you actually danced with me!”

“Would you prefer if I danced with you?” There’s a child-like wonder in his tone, as if he discovered something new. As if dancing with you will fix everything.

“Gods!” Groaning against your hand, you stomp towards the weirwood, hand braced on its trunk as you slouch beside it, eyes tightly closed, repressing the want to stab him in the abdomen. “You are far too late for that, Aerion.”

“No, I’m not.” The dagger dangles in between his fingers by his side, his intense gaze burns a hole through the skirt of your gown. “We’ve been married a year, we could still—”

“What brought this on?” You whirl in his direction, exasperated. “Is this about our conversation before? That I might be barren?” You stop him from answering with a hand up as you continue. “Aerion, if you want a child so badly then annul our marriage. It is obvious that it will not bear fruit, nor will it ever be. Marry someone else, someone who could give you children.”

“But I do not want someone else!” Blade raised, he closes the distance over to you as you take a step back, your back hitting the rough bark of the weirwood. He notices, and he immediately puts his dagger down. “I want you, is that so hard to believe?”

“You do not love like everyone else, Aerion. So yes, it is hard to believe so.”

“And you know how it’s supposed to be? Like how you think the storm bastard loves you, hm?” He steps closer, making you back away further against the tree. “Does he love you, Lady Arryn?” The title is said with disdain. “Do you love him? Is that it? How you know what love looks like. How it should be?”

“We were dancing!”

“So you say! Do not play me for a fool.” His sword calloused palm pushes your shoulder into the wood, nails digging in. “I’ve seen your face while you were with him, and you do not look at me like that, your husband, someone who is supposed to be the object of your love.”

“Does this look like love to you?” The words tumble out of your mouth, filled with cotton that suffocates your throat.

Aerion notices the position, his hand grasping onto your shoulder as if you’re going to fade, nails digging into the silk of your gown, pushing you harshly into the rough wood that will surely leave indents on the skin of your back.

He lets go, guilt marring his sharp features. “I… is it so awful to be with me?” Stepping back, he sheathes the dagger that drips with the red sap of the weirwood tree. He just now noticed that he sliced a part of it open out of his own anger. He’s just glad it wasn’t your flesh as the sap drips onto your fingers, staining your skin crimson.

“I do not love you as you love me, if that is the answer you are looking for.”

You don’t wield a dagger in your hand and yet your words have the same effect of a blade striking him down, cutting his throat.

“I married you because I had no choice in the matter.” Voice softening, the sticky sap coats your hand, crimson dripping from your fingers. You are sure that Aerion has done some transgression against the old gods for what he did. “Just like you had. This is duty, Aerion, I have a duty to you, to my house, to my father. We tried, many times, and it still hasn’t borne fruit. It may never happen.”

“It will. Someday, it will. You will give me a dragon. And you will love me as I love you.” He says determinedly, taking a step forward as you don’t back down this time around, continuing to stare him down. “I could wait, I can wait.”

“You can’t,” you walk closer, a hand reaching for his cheek. “I know you, Aerion, you are impatient.” He leans against your warmth, heat seeking, breathing you in. You smell more like the weirwood than yourself, like the earth he will soon return to if you leave him. “This love of yours will wane, and you will discard me once I am old and withered, once no one else will take me.”

“It won’t.” Shaking his head, he holds onto your waist, trying to keep you from walking away. “It won’t wane.”

Your eyes soften, a small smile appearing on your moonlit face. “If you truly love me annul our marriage. Let me go.”

“So you could marry him?” His once soft purple eyes turn heavy and narrowed.

“Yes.” You answer without delay.

Aerion flinches and pulls away from you. “Then I should kill him.”

“You’ll lose.” You’re so sure of yourself as your hands tucks in front of you, the sap sticking to your reddened palms. “You’re a great fighter, but Lyonel is better. He will kill you.”

“Then I shall kill you instead.”

“You’ll only be proving me right, husband.” You don’t move to retrieve your dagger, staring him down over your nose as you stand there rooted like the weirwood. “I am right here.” Arms raised to your sides, you taunt him underneath the moonlight. “But I’ll maim you before I draw my last breath. I will kick and scream and draw my blade against you and cut off your manhood so you will never have your precious dragon.”

Heaving, teeth grating, Aerion’s whole body trembles with rolling fury. He stares at you with disbelief and hurt, before twisting around and going further into the gardens and out of the walled keep lest he takes his dagger and plunges it right into your heart.

—

Aerion doesn’t know how long he has been walking around the woods, but the grass around him has turned thick and tall, brushing along his hips as he trudges around aimlessly. The dappled moonlight through the tree branches lights his way, and the incessant chirping of crickets irks him. But he’d rather not be back in the castle, moreso in the shared chambers where you would be, where your scent lingers in every crevice of the room.

He is afraid of losing you, of accidentally taking his dagger to your neck and slicing you open. He cannot risk the possibility of harming you, the thought alone turns his insides sour. He is afraid that you are right, that he is capable of killing you. His love for you may not be as pure and saccharine as Lyonel’s love for you, but it is love. His love, so why isn’t that enough for you?

The scent of incense wafts in his nose, akin to the heady scent from the Sept, an earthy smoke that billows a few ways ahead from his right as it wisps into the chilly night air. Aerion’s chest flares with the buried fury, he wants to hurt, to cut something, to cut someone just to let it all out and come back home to you calmly, ready to settle beside your warmth in the shared bed.

His footfalls crunches underneath dry leaves as he crosses the distance, dagger in hand, cutting down the vines in his way. Then he spots it, a tiny cottage no bigger than a carriage, old and dilapidated, lopsided and tilting on its side, threatening to keel over right on the moss covered ground.

The scent is stronger now that he is closer, there is a ring of mushrooms growing around the area, small brown caps all lined in a circle, as if shielding the cottage.

Aerion’s eyes narrows at the door, violence calls for him, whoever is through that door will be the recipient of his fury rather than you or the stormlord.

He steps over the mushrooms and continues to stalk towards the door quietly like a hunter. The door swings open before he could touch it, welcoming him gladly into the threshold.

Aerion enters, dagger clutched near his chest, letting his anger lead him inside.

The walls are covered in dried bundled herbs and animal furs, its scent is potent and lingers in the back of his throat. It’s all old wood, damp and bloated that is barely holding the whole structure. There’s a bubbling iron cauldron in the middle of the room, its contents is bright green, akin to wildfire as it warms the whole cottage. Except for a chair and a shelf littered with various vials, it’s sparsely decorated. Aerion’s nose scrunches with disgust.

“We’ve been expecting you, my prince.” A voice echoes from behind as the door closes with a creak.

Aerion whirls around, chest heaving as he points the sharp end of the dagger at a woman draped in darkness. “You are far too close to the castle, you trespass in our woods, witch.”

She smiles crookedly, the moonlight shining on half of her face. “Or is it you who trespass onto our land, Targaryen?”

Scoffing, the prince smiles, not unlike the smile he gives you, but a wicked one, a dangerous one. “It’s unfortunate that I ran into you, wretch.”

He raises his dagger, striking right at her but he hits nothing but air.

Aerion looks at the clean blade curiously when it's supposed to be coated with thick warm crimson. “What—?”

“You do not want that, Aerion.” For a moment she sounded like you, he expected to see you when he turns around on his heel but he sees the woods witch instead, still cloaked in darkness. “Tell me, you wish for something. I know you do, men always want.”

“I do not want anything.” He utters through clenched teeth.

“Yes, you do. Why do you lie to yourself?”

“If I do, no one in the realm can grant it, except for this.” He throws the dagger right at her, hitting her dead in her chest, right in the heart. Aerion smirks victoriously, but she doesn’t bleed nor keel over, she stands there, as still as a rock. “What in the seven hells—”

“The seven aren’t here.” She mutters, taking the blade from her heart with a squelch of flesh. She twists it around her palm, handing it back to him casually. “Tell me what you want.”

He swallows thickly, staring right at her, never letting his eyes wander away from the witch. “Why aren’t you dead?”

“Why aren’t you in Lys when you should be? Why isn’t the falcon with the stag when they should be together? Why does the hammer still stand tall and breathe when he isn’t supposed to be?”

“Stop speaking in riddles, witch.”

“Take the dagger.” Her words are spoken through different voices, simultaneously uttering it.

His eyes glances at the blade with hidden trepidation. Aerion reaches for his dagger as it dangles from her fingertips above the bubbling cauldron. He takes it, the blade slicing her palm open as blood drips onto the pot, mixing with the emerald waters. She bleeds, Aerion knows that she is human, or at least when she wants to be.

“Who are you?” He asks, dagger in hand, looking at the clean blade when it’s supposed to be bloodied.

“I am no one, but you are someone.” She mumbles, swiping a thumb over her opened palm. “I shall grant you your wish if you grant me mine.”

Aerion scoffs loudly, a laugh from the deepest depths of his chest. “I? I grant you your wish? A prince does not give out charity.”

“It’s an equivalent exchange.” Her tone lilts playfully. “Especially if it means that your wife would love you as you love her.”

Her words give him pause, the crooked smile faltering. “What do you mean?”

“If you give me a drop of your own blood, your king’s blood, I shall grant you the love you deserve.” She steps forward into the light, she looks old and young at the same time, her face shifting with every bubble popping from the cauldron. Her long raven hair drapes around her, the ends brushing along the ground as she moves.

“You are mad.”

“Not as mad as you, Brightflame.” Her hand extends forward, it’s wrinkled and old above the pot. “Just a drop of blood for the love you want. She will be yours, and you will be hers. Most of all, she will give you a dragon. Its wings will be mighty, soaring above the seven kingdoms, conquering the whole realm under your banner.”

He could just picture it, a trueborn prince, a mix of his Targaryen features and yours, a result of his love for you, a great warrior that he can mold into a vision of himself. His son will be as mighty as Aegon the conqueror himself. And then there’s you, your eyes will never wander ever again, your hands will forever hold him tenderly, and you would love him, your husband for forever and a day. Just like how it is supposed to be.

Aerion holds his head up high, chest puffed as he looks at the strange woman over his nose. “What do I need to do?”

“Blood for the old gods.” She smiles wickedly, her fingers stretching, reaching out for his own. “Just a drop will do, a drop and all your wishes will come true.” Aerion places his palm above the woman’s hand. “Won’t that be nice, Aerion?” Your voice can be heard from her lips again, he’s taken aback when he hears it as clear as day. Before he could take his hand away, the witch seizes his wrist, pricks his finger with her nail and lets his blood drip onto the cauldron. It turns blood red immediately. “We thank you for the equivalent exchange.”

Aerion snatches his hand away, staring at the small bead of blood right on his forefinger. “What now? Is it done?”

“No, not yet.” Her tone returns, and she procures a small twig from her pockets. “Say your wish and snap the weirwood in two.”

“What?” He scoffs out a laugh. “I am not an idiot.”

Huffing, she sucks in her teeth. “Take it or don’t. It doesn’t matter to me when you have already given me your blood.”

Aerion licks his lips and takes the twig. “This better work or I will come back here and turn your home into a pile of ashes.”

“It will work.” She sounds certain. “Go to your Lady love before it’s too late.”

“What do you mean?” The wood feels rough against his palm.

Her eyes crinkled in the corners, grinning at him crookedly. “The stag has his sights on your falcon.”

That raging fury finds its way into Aerion’s heart again. “That fucking bastard!” He kicks the door open as he stomps away, the cottage and the scent fading from behind.

When he looks over his shoulder to see it, it’s gone, vanished, as if it was never there. The twig sits heavier in his pocket with every footstep.

—

Aerion could just tell it was you whispering in the corridors. He could always tell with you, from the sound of your footsteps to the smell of your perfume, he knows it’s you.

He lurks behind the corner, listening to you whisper to your handmaiden. He hears a few sparse words, ‘hour’, ‘cannot tarry,’ ‘cloak,’ and that bastard’s name, said in your sweetened tone that he thought was only reserved just for him.

Aerion was thinking of you the whole trek back to the keep. He thought of not breaking the wood in half when he is certain that you still love him, when he’s still the only one in your heart. That maybe, just maybe, he’s just seeing things, that his jealousy was just that, jealousy. That you really were just dancing with him, that you still love your husband with your whole heart. But now as he listens to you plot your escape with the Lord of Storm’s End, he takes the wood from his pocket and holds it with two hands.

“I wish that my wife loves me more than anyone else in the whole realm.” Aerion mutters in the dark, snapping the twig in half.

You’re suddenly silent, the whispering ceases.

“M’lady?” The handmaiden calls you in a hushed tone, asking if you are well.

Aerion could hear you tell her that you are quite alright despite the maid’s protests. The conversation ends when the chamber doors shut with a click.

Footfalls echo from the handmaiden as she leaves with more thoughts than before, and Aerion slips from the darkness, glaring at the girl’s back before heading inside.

He shuts the door closed behind him quietly, and he sees you standing there cloaked in the darkness of the shared chambers, as still as a fallen tree, as quiet as a mouse. The hearth is dead, cold with the entire room freezing.

Aerion says your name as your eyes glimmer. “Are you feeling well?”

He sees the outline of your smile. “Why wouldn’t I be, my love?”

“Aren’t you cold?” His breath hitches in his throat, eyes never leaving your form.

“No, now that you’re here I’m warm.” Your arms open for him. “Come, I need you, husband.”

“Don’t you love Lyonel?” He tests you, jaw tight as his hands flexes at his sides.

A beat passes, a breath, a mere eerie second as you stand there idly.

Aerion watches you closely, like a bug he found underneath a stone.

You step forward, or more like slide your foot on the carpet, sliding one foot next to the other, shuffling closer to him as the sound of scraping feet against fabric echoes in the chamber.

Your bare feet kisses the tip of his boots, and he could finally see your face draped in the dark, your silhouette unmistakable even in the dim light, eyes shining like two diamonds in your eye sockets.

“Why would I love a mere stag when I’ve got a dragon all to myself?”

It worked, or he is truly mad to think that it worked. Mayhaps you snapped back to reality, back to your old self as you cradle his cheek in your palm that still smells like the acrid weirwood sap. The tips of your fingers are still stained red as your thumb traces along his jawline tenderly. Aerion rests against your hold, heart beating rapidly.

“You smell good.” You utter, closing the distance, pressing your nose against the hinge of his jaw and just breathe. You breathe him in, inhaling his scent as your nose grazes his skin. “Gods, you feel good.”

“I need to see you in the light.” He whispers against the shell of your ear, hands cupping your hips in an almost bruising hold. “Do you love me?”

“More than anyone in the whole realm.”

His heart quickens at your confession.

You take his earlobe in between your teeth and nibble, the sensation running through him as he gasps and takes the back of your knees, holding you up as you wrap your legs around him. He carries you over to the plush bed, and drops you off onto the mattress. Your legs are immediately hooked around him, pulling him in between your thighs. The moonlight shines on you, and Aerion sees the love in your eyes, love that is aimed at him, and only him.

Aerion falls atop you, hands braced on the side of your head. “Gods…” it worked.

“Let me give you a dragon, my love. Please let me carry our own prince.” You plead, pawing at his doublet, trying to untie the laces in your trembling fingers.

He seizes your fumbling wrist as he pants over you, eyes blown, lips agape. “Promise me you won’t leave me.”

Your brows furrows, head tilted like you just saw a kitten wandering around the keep, cooing at him as you take his face in your hands. “I will never leave you. You are my great love, Aerion.”

A relieved smile appears on his face. “That is all I needed to hear.”

—

The sun basks around the chamber, illuminating your sleeping face as Aerion draws Valyrian runes on your arm, over the silk of your chemise. You’re wrapped around him, legs over his own, arms embracing him like you’re trying to meld together with your husband. You sleep soundly, eyes moving underneath your eyelids as he watches you with love in his tender eyes.

This is all he wanted.

The birds chirp outside amidst the sound of hooves in the courtyard and of men and women waking up throughout the Red Keep.

His index draws the Valyrian rune for love upon your skin, then a rune for protection and a rune for fertility. You awaken at the last rune, eyes fluttering open, immediately smiling at him.

“Good morrow, husband.” Your knuckles dance along his bare chest, caressing lovingly.

“Wife, you fell asleep whilst I was undressing.” He mirrors your smile.

“My apologies, the night caught up to me I suppose.” Lifting yourself up by your elbows, you move to straddle him, hands braced atop his chest. “But I’m well rested now—” Your face goes completely still. Eyes flicking from his face, to the bed, then over to the rising sun outside the window. “What the fuck!” Flinching, you fall from the bed, frantically getting up, crawling away from him with fear in your eyes. “How— what?!” You scream in horror. Heaving, eyes watering, lips wobbling as you stare at him with confusion. “What did you do to me?!”

“What happened?!” Aerion has his hands up, trying to calm you down. “My love, are you alright?”

“You fucking—” you were about to lunge at him before you went still again, comporting yourself as the smile returns. The look of sheer terror gone in a blink. “Oh, do you want to break fast?”

“What in the seven hells was that?!” Aerion marches over to you, gripping onto your shoulders. “What happened?”

“I’m sorry,” you’re doing that face again, that pitying look, that sorry, frowning look that makes you look less like you. “I thought I was still dreaming. I had a nightmare.” Hand on his cheek, you hold him. “Did I scare you? I’m sorry, oh, I’m so sorry, my love.” Cheek pressed against the crook of his neck, you embrace him tightly.

Aerion’s hands hover over you before returning the embrace. “It’s alright, you were confused, it was just confusion.”

“Forgive me.” You mutter against his skin, right on the hinge of his jaw. “Will you ever forgive me, my prince?”

“Of course, always.” Pecking your temple, he lets his kiss linger.

—

Aerion watches you reject Lyonel right in the courtyard. He’s leaning against the balcony, smirking to himself.

The Baratheon sigil flutters against the wind, the caravan is about to depart for Storm’s End, and their liege Lord is trying to coax you into coming with him. Aerion could only laugh at himself when you slap Lyonel’s hand away with a disgusted grimace. He sees the exact moment you break his heart.

He could only hear snippets of the conversation, Lyonel is confused, asking what happened to you, why all of a sudden you did not want him, why you are suddenly so fixated on the prince rather than on him. Aerion was right, you were trying to leave with the laughing storm, to become his Lady wife instead of a princess. He made the wish just in time, he made the right call.

“I can’t.” You’re shaking your head at Lyonel, turning your back on him. “Goodbye, Lord Baratheon.”

Aerion knows that look on his face, it was the same look he had when he saw you dance with Lyonel, and now he is feeling the same heartbreak he caused himself.

Hitching your dress up, you walk up the steps to the balcony whilst Lyonel turns his attention away from you over to Aerion. His ire, his fury is aimed right at him. He knows, the man knows he has done something to you. Did his love for you run that thick for him to question why you suddenly had a change of heart?

“My love,” you call for him, a hand upon his bicep. “Shall we go?”

“I thought you needed to do something important?” He teases, testing the waters.

“Nothing is important here anymore.” You give him a smile and a peck to his shoulder. “Come, our bed awaits us.”

—

A moon has passed and your love hasn’t waned, not even a little as he always wakes up to you peppering his face with kisses. The wish or what Aerion thinks is a spell is working well in his favour. You have never left his side, even during training at the yard where you’d be sitting atop a crate, watching him train with a sword whilst you smile at him the whole time. And in the shared chambers you never protested when he would lie on your lap with your fingers raking through his hair. It was those slow languid mornings he savoured every minute of.

You are completely spellbound.

Aerion would think that your increased presence would become vexing but it hasn’t, he’s enjoying every minute of your unbridled attention. He relished in it, your kisses, your touch, every saccharine words whispered in his ear as you gasped breathlessly atop him whilst during marital duties that isn’t a duty any longer, it has become a need for you as much as he wanted it too.

He should grant the witch a plot of land for what she has done for him. Especially when it did not take time for the seed to sprout, the maester announced your quickening on a warm sunny day, a day he will never forget. He could still feel the elation he felt from the news, and he could picture in his mind how a smile split your face open, jumping to hold him.

The news brought on great tidings from his family and from the nobles of the court. All except for a certain Lord in the Stormlands, whom he has heard isn’t doing quite well with the news. When he told you of the whispers about Lyonel, your face stilled in that eerie way he hates. A tear slid down your face before returning back to your smiling self, as if nothing happened, the only indication was the tears trapped inside your eyes as you told him that you did not care for him at all.

Gifts were brought to the shared chambers every day, from blankets embroidered with both Arryn and Targaryen sigils, to silver rattles and carved wooden dragons, the babe was already spoiled before he could come out of your womb. Aerion even gifted you a golden necklace with two dragons dancing together on a heart shaped pendant. You hugged him so tightly that you took the air right from his lungs, refusing to let him go that he had to push you away. You did that deep frown right after, walking backwards into the corner of the room unnervingly, heaving angrily at him until he had to placate you sweetly.

You’re always holding onto your stomach, if not there then around Aerion’s arm or hand. The maester examines you every night per the prince’s instructions, and he had said time and time again that you and the babe were fine. But despite that, Aerion has gone increasingly paranoid, that someone is going to take you, that something will happen to the babe. That Lyonel would take you in your sleep and proclaim you his.

You would always calm him down, holding him beside you as you grasp at his hand that rests atop your blossoming stomach. You have told him that you cannot wait to see him, to hold your son in your arms and to find out if he resembles a dragon or more of a falcon. Aerion is the same, he wants to meet the conqueror reborn. But the excitement for you is much more intense, on some days he would see you standing in front of the looking glass, caressing your stomach, eyes unmoving on the reflection.

You were never left alone for too long, there was once that Aerion had to leave for the whole day to attend to some river Lord he did not care for. You pleaded to join him, but in the end he had to placate you with a kiss and a promise to return as quick as possible. When he returned to the chambers, he saw you standing in the same place, still in your nightgown, and smelt like Flea Bottom. You were standing atop your own excrement, and Aerion felt like the wind got knocked out of him when he saw the state you were in. He had to call for the servants and berate them for leaving you like that whilst he scrubbed you in the tub. All they had to say was that you did not want to leave because he had asked you to stay where you were. And that you had screamed at them like you were being cleaved in half.

More moons go by and you grow increasingly odd, especially after your fourth moon of carrying his son. You grew antsy and impatient as your belly ballooned, always citing that you want to meet your son, you are far too eager to meet him. Too intense that it's frightening to see you with a knife. Aerion would calm you, telling you softly that the babe needs time to grow strong. The maester called it a woman’s sickness that most expecting mothers went through, and that it is normal and would soon wane when the child is born. But Aerion knows better, he knows that you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, screaming and crying at your belly, yelling at him, asking him what he has done to you before your face stills again, smiling, acting like nothing happened.

You never left the room, you always stared at the fire like your insides were freezing. You had your moments, the sudden stillness, the sudden weeping and crying out to be let go when you are free to roam around the keep. As quick as it came, that oddness faded, and you’re back to kissing him and sharing his bed. Those moments outweighed the oddities, especially when you would always go back to loving him, to being his beloved wife.

Aerion is happy, this is all he ever wanted. Or so he keeps telling himself every time you wake with a scream and cursing his name.

On the night of your sixth moon carrying his son, he wakes up to a squelch of tearing flesh and blood. Your side of the bed is empty, your perfume lingering on the pillow.

The room is warm, too warm, scorching hot as he sweats through the blankets. Your name falls from his lips, calling for you in increasing volume and panic.

Then he hears it amidst the roar of the fireplace and cracking wood— a hum, a song that he taught you to sing to the babe in your belly, an old Valyrian lullaby.

“My love?” Flinging the blankets away, he walks closer to you as you sit in front of the fireplace, your silhouette is unmistakable whilst you sway to the song you’re humming. Your thin chemise sticks to your sweaty skin, hair mused. “What—?” He smells it, it wafts in the air like your perfume— blood. Dread gnaws at his insides. Going around the settee, he steps onto a puddle, crimson sticks at the bottom of his bare feet, your own blood flowing from underneath you, pooled around you.

Aerion has never felt fear like this before.

The crooning stops abruptly, body stilling completely. “I couldn’t wait to meet him.”

“What have you done?” His voice trembles around the edges.

Your head turns slowly to him, face illuminated by the flames, arms cradling a bundle of bloody blankets with dragons and falcons soaring together.

“Oh, he’s beautiful, Aerion. Do you want to see him?” You smile weakly, trembling, colour drained. Twisting around on the carpet, tracking blood on the Targaryen fabric, you face him fully.

Aerion flinches away, back hitting the end of your vanity as he sees your belly cleaved open, insides pouring out and your own bloodied dagger laying beside your feet.

His vision blurs, eyes turning to the bundle as your trembling hand moves the blankets away to show him his son. His babe, his boy has scales instead of skin. Eyes completely shut, undeveloped on his face, wings half grown from his back, and a tail protruding from the small of his back, curved around his torso, melted across his scaly chest.

This is not his son.

“Look, he’s got your hair.” Your finger brushes along its head of silver. You laugh, a weak and awful laugh more akin to a death knell.

“What— why did you do that?” Aerion lunges, hands grasping onto your cold shoulders in a bruising hold.

Your tearful eyes look into his purple terrified eyes. “I bore you a dragon.”

This is the love he deserves.

But it was as real as the scars on your arms.

You could still remember how it held onto you, desperate, clinging to you like a child to its mother. You are not its mother, that thing tried to kill you, tried to take you down with it. It shouldn’t be pitied even when it wears your face, it’s a monster, grotesque, a monstrosity and monsters are merely that— monsters.

It doesn’t have cohesive thoughts inside its head, it doesn’t even breathe nor speak, and most of all, it’s not you, not really, just a fucked up version of you that this yellow hell tried to copy right from your memories. Like how it did with Janet, your grandfather, and the stranger in the bathroom, and even pirate Clark. They’re not human, they’re not the real thing, just a cheap imitation that went wrong somewhere in the process.

It shouldn’t bother you, you should stop thinking about what happened and how you almost ended up falling to your death. And yet you find yourself scratching at your neck, nails picking at the healing scabs, opening the wounds again.

Grimacing, you pull your hand away, seeing your blood caked underneath your fingernails has you stifling the bile rising from your throat that coats your mouth in saliva. You take a sip of the sweetened almond water to tamp it away, taking deep breaths through your nose as you listen to the recording of birdsong echoing around the clearing.

The fallen tree trunk behind you feels rough as it scratches your back. You’re resting on it, head held up, not minding the roughness against your nape as you stare at the artificial sky that is painted across the high ceiling. There are fluffy clouds, too symmetrical, too similar from each other for it to be real. The clouds don’t move unlike the real thing, the blue sky remains the exact same even though you have been laying here for hours.

The whole false sky is painted as realistic as possible to fool you, but the clouds hang by clear threads, and it reminds you of a studio where movies were shot in. A mere studio lot made my man, but you highly doubt that human hands painted the sky and placed the still clouds above. Maybe if you unravel the blue paint you’ll see the yellow wallpaper underneath, if you could just scratch the surface, break the mold, maybe just maybe, you’ll see the real sun under all of it.

Your mind has gone wobbly, turned around, body clock telling you to sleep but the light above tells you that it’s not time for it yet. There are no mornings or nights here, time is pliable here, no day and night cycle, just the permanent light from the artificial sun above.

The days you have spent in this hell have blurred together through trudging along different rooms. From the boiler rooms to the pools and dilapidated buildings and mono yellow wallpaper, you have no sense of time anymore. Before it was your phone that helped you see how many hours or days it’s been but after it broke, you’re drifting through the days with only sleep determining if a day has passed. But you know it’s been two hours since you almost fell through the floor and to your death, you counted the minutes, grounding yourself onto the grass that doesn’t really smell like grass but more akin to plastic, but it feels real, awfully real under your open palms. Two hours since you saw a version of you with its broken neck. Two hours since Bobby saved you, two hours since the bruise around your wrist appeared from how hard he held onto you.

How badly he wanted to save you.

Your whole body aches, a slight tremble in the muscles of your limbs, a flinch under your flesh, as if the memory of what transpired shakes your insides, engraved into your bones and in the fibers of your muscle. You could just sleep here and let the world forget you.

The sun above, or what seems to be like the sun shines on you, is eternally warm, it doesn’t fade nor wane, but that’s how you know it isn’t real. The temperature stays the same, not warm nor cold, just right, like a spring afternoon, like someone locked the thermostat to stay the same temperature forever. The light comes from the painted ceiling, a mere orb that blurs at the edges from the light it emanates, a mere imitation of the real thing.

“We have to go in eventually.” Bobby rasps, voice hoarse and deeper, shoulders resting against the tree trunk, chest rising and falling as his eyes stay on the lone pink house at the center of the clearing.

He lays beside you, you thought he was still asleep, you have no idea how someone could sleep after that but perhaps that’s how his body reacted to the horror, to sleep it off and pretend it was just a dream just like you have years ago.

His eyes were closed last you checked on him, sunglasses over his eyes as he slept. The two of you are too afraid to cross the distance over to the pink house with its pink chimney that billows white smoke. It has a little garden with pretty white wooden picket fences all around it. It’s warm and looks cozy, inviting, too welcoming.

“What horrors lie inside for us?” You mutter back, licking at your dry lips as you lay limp beside him.

“Dolls.”

“What?” Your head cranes in his direction, eyes narrowed, vision blurry and adjusting when you’ve been staring at the light for too long.

“Dolls.” Bobby flutters his lips, glasses hitched up to his head casually, sandy hair sticking up all over the place. “It looks like a place where it would have those creepy antique dolls.”

You crack a smile that falters immediately. “I think you’re still a little bit high, Bobby.”

“The shit we went through sobered me up.” The corners of his lips tug into a soft smile, neck turning towards you, cheek pressed against his shoulder. His blue eyes stare right at you, heavy and tired. “I wanna get high after that.”

“Save it when we survive this one.” Heaving yourself up, you stand up on wobbly legs, using his knee for leverage as you feel his searing skin underneath your palm. “Come on, Bobby, it’s now or never.” You give him a helping hand, palm open, ready to receive him.

“Can it be never?” Looking up, his eyes squint at you with the artificial sun lighting you up from behind, cloaking your face in shadows and lining your silhouette in light.

“I wish. But I don’t see any doors here except for the front door.”

“Fuck my life.” Extending his hand, Bobby takes yours, gently clasping his fingers around you as you help lift him up, and he shakes the sleep away from his muddled mind.

Will it be like this forever? Running from room to room and dodging violent entities until some miracle happens? Until your luck runs out?

Guilt coats the inside of your mouth, bitter and acrid like acid on your tongue. This is all your fault.

“Maybe there’s another exit somewhere.” He cuts through the silence as you two trek towards the house, grass crunching underfoot. “I came out of a different room from yours, so there might be other exits out of here.” Despite his hopeful words, he sounds dejected, hopeless as his hand brushes along your own whilst you two walk side by side. “There has to be.” He says your name, laced with trepidation and sorrow. “You good?”

“Trying my best to be, Bobby.” Inhaling, you give him a weak smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes. “You know, you never really finished telling me your rules. Might help with this encounter.”

“My rules?” He pauses by the fence, a hand grasping at the wood as he tilts his head at you.

“Yeah, you were telling me about some rules before we found the cereal and water in the sail boat room.” Shrugging, you’ve found yourself staring into his eyes more than before. “You’ve only told me one, ‘don’t split up.’”

His eyes turn up, thinking, trying to remember. Realization appears on his face as his mouth curves into an ‘o’, “Let me get back to you on that.”

Huffing a laugh, you shake your head as sweat forms on your nape. “All this time you haven’t thought of more rules?”

“No, more like, I can’t fucking remember it.” His brows are furrowed together, nose scrunched at trying to recall the thoughts. “I blame this place, I’ve always got a good memory but…I don’t know, somehow being here made me stupider.”

“You are not stupid.” With a hand grazing along his own, you reassure him with a gentle smile. You could hold his hand, but you decide not to, it still feels wrong to hold him. “Far from it.”

“Thanks.” Bobby has a tight-lipped smile, collarbone catching the light as the chain around his neck shines, the light bouncing from the metal onto his skin. “Just don’t ask me any chemistry related questions.”

“Don’t worry.” You scoff out a laugh that still weighs heavy for the both of you. “I won’t give you a pop quiz.”

“Thank fuck for that.” Pushing the garden gate open, he steps through, looking over his shoulder to you immediately once he’s on a stone step. Nothing is unusual, not yet anyway. “Do you think this place has a bed?”

You fall in step with him, jaw clenched, hands suddenly clammy. “What? Why?”

“To sleep in? What else?” Bobby flicks your forehead and you glower at him. “Get your mind out of the gutter, it’s just that we haven’t slept in a real bed in days.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that.” You roll your eyes, unclenching your jaw. “I’d rather have a real shower, and not smell like sweat and chlorine. I could sleep anywhere.”

He chuckles lightly. “Yeah, I’ve seen you sleep wherever. If I had my camera it would have a dozen of you sleeping in odd places.” You two make it in front of the door, he holds onto the doorknob and you could feel Bobby’s trepidation snaking under his skin.

“You can make a collage out of it. Sleeping anywhere is a talent.” You stare at his hand grasping the brass doorknob, and you cup his shoulder, taking his attention away from it for a moment. “Before we go in, I have to tell you something.”

“Are you gonna go sappy on me?” He could just tell, he knows you that much already.

“Yes, very sappy.” Chortling, your smile falters as you gaze into the blue depths of his eyes, almost drowning in them. “Thank you, Bobby, for everything, you have saved me more times than I’ve saved you.”

“Who’s keeping count, hm?” He nudges you gently, mirroring your smile. “It’s no problem, you would do the same. Ready?”

“Never, but with you?” Your breath hitches before you speak the simple word. “Yes.”

Bobby’s lips ticks up into that lopsided smile that you find adorable. Gums peeking, eyes crinkling in the corners despite his fatigue and the fear still hanging onto the fibers of his muscle. Chortling, his eyes flick away from you before shaking his head. “Ready that hammer, hero.”

Nodding, you take a steady stance, a palm tightly wound around the hammer as it weighs heavy in your hand.

Bobby’s Adam’s apple moves, swallowing down his nerves as he twists the doorknob open.

The door doesn’t let out a creak nor a squeak. It opens without a sound, a door that is seemingly well tended to unlike the others you’ve encountered.

The first thing you see is pink, different shades of it, from hot pink to a lighter hue, a baby pink, a more tolerable pink than the neon shade of the plush couch inside.

Bobby glances at you with furrowed brows, a mirror of your expression when you both get hit by the smell of freshly baked bread that wafts from the inside over to the cracked open door.

“What the fuck?” He whispers, jaw clenched, chest rising and falling in an uneven rhythm.

“Let me go first.” Muttering back, you nudge him with your shoulder, taking a step into the threshold with one foot inside, the other beside Bobby’s.

“No.” His answer is instantaneous, a hand around your wrist. “We might get Hansel and Greteled.”

“Do you think there’s a fucking witch inside or something?”

“No, I think we’re getting lured into a goddamn trap.” His eyes narrow, laden with nerves.

“All the entities we’ve seen so far don’t lure people, they stalk and run after you but they’re not smart, Bobby.” You stand tall, looking him directly in his blue eyes. “They’re not capable of human thought.”

“What do you think this is then?” He doesn’t back down either.

“Our chance of finding a way out and back into the yellow wallpaper rooms. The door we went through closed behind us, would you rather walk around the woods and try your luck there?”

“Actually, yeah.” Nodding, he scoffs, licking at his dry lips, peeking through the crack, eyes roaming around the decorated walls. “There aren’t any dolls—”

“Bobby.” Inhaling, the scent of baked goods makes your stomach rumble, but the smell is buried under the chlorine still sticking to Bobby’s skin that is glowing underneath the fake sun. “Remember the theater room?”

His attention is on a decorative clock that is shaped like a cat on the wall. It stays on the same numbers, eleven thirty, the seconds hand not moving, nor the hour hand, it just ticks, shuffling up and down on the clock face of a cartoon cat. “Yeah.”

“I have the same feeling that this one is safe.”

“Your gut tells you that?” Those blue eyes hone in on you once again, and your cheeks turn warm.

“Yeah, if we die then you can blame me in the afterlife.”

Shaking his head, stifling a smile, Bobby reluctantly moves aside for you. “Not funny, hero.”

“It’s a little bit funny.” Knocking your knee with his in an attempt to reassure him, you step inside, trying to hide the way your hand shakes around the hammer. In truth, you can’t have him go first, you can’t find it in yourself to let him go inside first. So if there is something inside, you’re the first person to get mutilated, or worse.

“Go slow.” His voice lowers against the shell of your ear, tone rumbling, breath fanning your cheek.

Goosebumps rise on your arms when you feel his tone reverberate through you in waves. “Will do.”

Slowly, one foot after the other, you go through cautiously. The smell is stronger inside, there is no familiar scent of mold or damp carpets, the whole house smells like a café. And it even looks like one of those gimmicky cafés that pulls customers in with the cutesy decor rather than for their coffee and cakes.

“Looks like a little girl decorated this place.” Bobby remarks before you do. He’s close behind you, fingers curled around the hem of your jacket as it rustles faintly, reminding you of the entity that eerily looked like you.

The place has a regular floorplan like any other house, the door opens to a living room, walls painted in light pink, decorated with adorable pictures of woodland creatures that have pretty frames of filigree and flowers. There’s a big painting of kittens in a basket right across the frilly pink couch that reminds you of a grandmother’s couch with the bright pink flowers patterned fabric covering it. Everywhere you look you see cute decorations, from the lamps shaped like tulips and sunflowers, to the pillows that have Hello Kitty prints on them. There are a lot of Hello Kittys, too many Hello Kitty themed stuff that any crazed fan would kill for in the real word.

“Why are there so many Hello Kitty?” Nose scrunched, you continue to look around.

“I thought you’d be into this shit.” You could see the smug look on his face from his tone, whilst you stare at a collection of porcelain Hello Kittys inside a glass cupboard that is of course painted pink.

“I like Hello Kitty, but not this much.” You enter the kitchen, it’s as pink as the living room, the cabinets and even the utensils are all pink and Hello Kitty themed.

“I dig it.”

Looking over your shoulder, you tilt your head at him with a stifled smile. “This is more your scene then?”

“I didn’t mean that,” rolling his eyes, Bobby nudges his shoulder against yours, copying your head tilt playfully. “I just thought that this is better than the yellow hell we went through—” his eyes flicks behind you, confusion right on his face. “Were those there before?”

You follow his line of sight, twisting around. Your mouth waters from the sight. Right on the table are plates upon plates of baked goods. Raspberry tarts, chocolate chip cookies, macaroons, and crumpets to pair up with the steaming cups of tea beside it. The plates, down to the tea cups are all adorable, and are all Hello Kitty trademarked.

“No, I think you’re right, we’re getting Hansel and Greteled.”

“Yeah, we should go, Gretel.” Bobby tugs at your sleeve, hand sliding down your bicep to your wrist, fingers curling around it. “C’mon.”

“Should we at least try it out?” You linger in place, focused right on the cookies that are still hot.

“No fucking way,” he pulls at you again, and yet you stay. “do you know the fae story? That you shouldn’t eat any of the food they offer or you’ll get stuck in their world forever?”

“Of course, I know.” You scoff, turning to face him. “But we’ll soon run out of the stale cereal and almond water. Who do you think got the munchies and ate most of it?”

“Us, hero, the both of us did.” He answers matter of factly. “I’d rather eat the stale cereal first before I grab a suspicious looking eclair.”

You relent, cheeks puffed with air before exhaling out. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“C’mon then.” When you don’t move, Bobby sighs and looks at you again. He finds you staring at his hand wrapped around your wrist and he pauses, glancing at you warily. “May I? Sorry.”

Your eyes gazes into his own, and you see those blue eyes of his falter for a moment, and you have no idea why. “Okay.” With your hand opening, Bobby slides his palm on yours, fingers interlocking without a second thought as your fingers curl above his own. “Are we going upstairs?”

“Yeah,” Bobby unsticks his gaze at the intertwined hands, nodding and turning on his heel to lead you away. “The exit better be up there.”

“Or at least one that leads back to the yellow wallpaper.”

“Why do you want that?” His brow rises to his forehead, slowly making his way up the steps with you following closely behind with your hammer.

“Because it’s where we both entered from. That means we have a bigger chance of finding the door you came from over there than here.”

“Huh, that actually makes sense.” His lips smacks together, boots thumping against the steps. “But I’d rather find the real exit.”

Before he could make it to the top step, you move ahead of him, maneuvering around him, quickly making it to the top, and surveying the second floor and putting yourself out into possible danger before him. He could only huff at your behavior, if it reassures you then he lets you, unless there is actual danger ahead that is.

Bobby peeks over the pink and white bannister of the stairs, scanning the environment and the opened doors of each room whilst you do the same. Hammer in hand, weighing it in your hold, you see three rooms. Two bedrooms, one bigger than the other, and a bathroom, all decorated and in theme as the rest of the house.

“Bobby, there’s a shower.” You look at the bathroom that has pink soaps and shampoos on the racks like you found gold.

“And a bed.” He’s more focused on the opened bedroom door with the plush bed and fluffy comforter.

The two of you turn to the other at the same time, smiles tugging at the corners of your lips, eyes shining. Finally, some reprieve, a sense of normalcy.

—

The warm water against your bare skin feels like heaven. You’re in paradise as you let the water fall on you like raindrops. The air around you smells like strawberries and cream, the only available shampoo and soap in the place. It has a strong and sweet scent that reminds you of the perfume counter at the local dying mall. You don’t mind the strong smell when you smelled like sweat and grime for who knows how long. It’s a welcome reprieve, a sense of normalcy.

You and Bobby checked every crevice of the house, from the cabinets to even the oven, no stone was left unturned. Bobby didn’t want another surprise like last time. And as per his rules, you both didn’t separate the whole time. You both moved like one unit, one organism, every move was in sync, one heartbeat shared. If he was going to look under the bed, you would be standing guard behind him, hammer at the ready. The two of you learned a hard lesson from the incident at the pool rooms, you would rather not have a repeat of it if some lanky entity managed to slip inside the cupboard and jumped to surprise Bobby while he’s on the toilet. 

The thought makes you laugh to yourself. You find that you have to laugh despite it all, or else you’ll end up spiraling, thinking heavily about everything that weighs you down. You can’t afford to freeze in this place when you’ve got Bobby to worry about. 

The you from before you fell into this place would’ve buckled over what happened. But this present version of you, who has survived horrors after another didn’t. You’ve found yourself recalling it whenever the quiet lulls your mind into itself, remembering how it felt to dangle from a hundred feet in the air, remembering how the hounds snarled, how the being wrapped its arms around you, and how the walls sang. But just one look at Bobby, one huff or call of your name slipping from his lips and you’re back to the present. He grounds you, he helps bring you back from the depths of your mind that you found it once impossible to slip out of.

You should be calling him hero, not the other way around.

Stepping out of the shower, the damp pink shower curtain sticks to your leg, making you shake it to untick the damned thing. 

“Little shit—!” Your leg slips on the wet tiles, but you manage to get a hold of the sink beside you before you tumble down harshly.

A loud knock hits the door, and Bobby’s frantic voice echoes from behind it, muffled by the pink girly door. “Fuck, you okay?!” 

“Yep,” you instinctively grab the towel on the rack, it’s weirdly warm as you wrap it around yourself, as if someone heated it and anticipated your visit. “I’m okay, I almost slipped but I’m okay.”

“Thank fuck.” His voice falters, sighing in relief. 

“I thought you fell asleep already. Were you behind the door the whole time?” Your heart warms at the thought whilst you start getting dressed in the same clothes you came in. Unfortunately there’s no washing machines in this place or fresh clothes in the wardrobes. You can’t have everything you want it seems.

A minute passes before he answers. “...yeah. This place made me paranoid.” 

“No, it’s okay.” Your voice bounces off the tiles as you find yourself smiling at the mirror whilst you brush your teeth with a Hello Kitty toothbrush that was still sealed in plastic right inside a plastic cat shaped cup. “I can do the same for you if you want?”

“Yeah?” He sounds ecstatic at your offer, but he’s still trying to act like he’s not embarrassed about it.

“Yeah, of course.” Mouth filled with toothpaste, you hurry up so he could freshen up. You could just tell he wanted to go shower first but gave the first dibs to you.

“So what’s the verdict on the shower? Is there hot water?” 

“Yeah!” Spitting out the toothpaste, you smack your lips together, looking at your teeth and finding yourself smiling from how good it made you feel now that you’re clean, leaving all the remnants of blood and grime to swirl down into the drain. You really needed that shower when the last time you washed up was in the pool rooms and the water there smelled like chlorine that stuck to your skin like glue. “There’s toothbrushes and toothpaste too.” 

“What?” Bobby scoffs out a chortle. “What if someone used it already?”

“It was sealed, Bobby.” The towel is soft in your hold as you dry your hair with it.

“Really?” 

“Yep, the towels are warm too, I saved you one. They’re pink though, like the rest of this place.” 

“D’you think I care if it’s pink or blue?”

“Yeah, because you’re a manly man.” You tease, hanging the towel to dry beside the other that’s more hot pink than the baby pink towel you used. You’re going to get sick of all this pink. 

Bobby chuckles behind the door, probably rolling his eyes at you. “Yeah, yeah, hurry up, I can feel the oil on my scalp.”

Fully dressed, jacket around you and hair still damp, you go to open the door, twisting the doorknob and pulling at it. 

Out comes Bobby, tumbling backwards and landing onto your feet. You look down, biting at your lip to stifle the guffaw bubbling in your throat. “Well, hello there.”

“Hi?” His eyes are blown wide, smiling crookedly, awkwardly as he looks up at you through his lashes, neck craning up where a vein pops up from underneath his skin, right beside his throat. “Come here often?” 

“Did you magically turn into a doormat?” 

Bobby scrambles away, hopping up to his feet, trying and failing to act nonchalant. “You done?” He keeps his eyes on your face and not at the falling water droplet right on your clavicle. 

“Yeah,” you move away, giving him the space as you grin. “Your turn, stinky.” 

“I nickname you hero and I get stinky, great.” 

“It fits though.”

“Shut up.” The door slams at your face, and your laugh is muffled by the door while Bobby groans into his hands. 

—

“Are you sure you don’t want to take the bed?” You ask whilst you help him place the pink and white comforter on the floor beside the bed. “You said you wanted to sleep on a proper bed this time.” 

The fabric flutters down, and Bobby smooths it out on the floor, crouched down, hair still damp as it sticks to his forehead. He looks much better under the warm yellow Hello Kitty lamp now that he had a shower and you both ate the last of the cereal. You two smell like each other, both sweet, both drenched in strawberries and cream scented soap. 

“Yeah, I told you we can switch next time.” Shrugging, he crawls on the comforter, arms open as you throw a furry pillow at him. “Really, hero?” He glowers at the pillow in his hands as you climb up the bed. “This looks uncomfortable.” 

“It’s to put on your side so you don’t bump into the bed.” Stifling a grin, you throw him another pillow, this time it’s bigger and has a silk pillowcase that is of course pink. “D’you want a hotdog too?” 

“A what?” He looks up at you and you plop down on your stomach, looking down from the bed. The view from below makes Bobby regret not sleeping in the other room when the sight made his stomach do flips. You look happier, comfortable despite seeing another version of yourself that tried to kill you. 

“A hotdog pillow.” Somehow you procure a long pillow with a frilly pillowcase, pulling it to your side. “To hug.” 

“That’s what you call it?” The corner of his lips ticks up into an endeared smile. “Right, give me the hotdog.” 

“I’ve got another one here.” You let it fall on him as he catches it. “Whoever decorated this room is a girl’s girl.” 

“I’m too tired for this shit. I have no idea what that means.” Shaking his head with a hidden smile, Bobby plops down on his makeshift bed, head landing on the silk pillow with a soft thud. His arm is looped around the longer pillow, gazing up at you as you continue to peek over the edge of the bed. Eyes narrowing, the light from the windows glares right in his eyes. “Damn it.” 

Bobby starts to move but you beat him to it. 

“I’ll get it.” You hop off the bed to close the curtains, snuffing out some of the eternal light outside. There’s no hum here, as if the singing abruptly stopped after it fell. Or perhaps the song in the walls just doesn’t reach this place. You could feel Bobby’s eyes following you while you shut all the curtains inside the room, leaving the only light from the Hello Kitty lamps in the corners to illuminate the place. “There.” 

“D’you think this place has a day and night cycle?” He mutters, face pressed against the long pillow as you climb back into bed. 

“I don’t think so. Watch out.” You drop the spare blanket over to him as it lands right on his chest. “Sorry.”

“You’re good.” Unfolding the blanket, he settles in, looking comfortable under the covers. Looking out of place in a nest of pink and furs. “I hope we get to see the moon again.” He thinks loudly, jaw tightening, hugging the pillow to his chest. 

The yellow light from the lampshade shines right on his face, illuminating his sharp profile, and the single hoop earring and chain around his neck catches the light. The other half of his face is blanketed in shadows, painting him in a more sorrowful look. You admit that he looks beautiful this way, like a painting in a museum. 

“I hope so too.” You missed the warmth of the sun so much that you’ve forgotten about the moon and how beautiful it was to look out the laundromat windows and see it shine brightly down on the empty parking lot. You miss your only companion that accompanied you through every night shift, how it changes every night and yet beautiful all the same. “Are you sure you don’t want to sleep in the other room?” 

“Yeah, I’m sure. No separating, remember?” You locked the door behind you again, and Bobby wants to open it, to see the unbridled smile and the unguarded laugh with your eyes shining once again.

“Yeah,” you settle in, hugging your own long pillow and sighing at how soft the bed is, its softness enveloping you in a warm comfortable embrace. “No separating.”

You don’t want to separate from him either, even when you deem this place safe. Being alone in this place even for just a moment scares you. This place, this house and this room isn’t so bad, but there are a few reminders that tell you that you are not in a normal place. Like how the towels are warm when no one warmed it beforehand, how there is always food ready at the table, and why you and Bobby need to block the door with a chair right under the doorknob.

This place is off, odd, like it was specifically built to appease wanderers, to let your guard down and strike when you’re fully unaware. 

“You asleep?” Bobby cuts through the silence, tugging at your blanket gently when you find yourself staring at the door, as if you’re waiting for something to appear.

“Almost.” You lie. 

“I—I’m glad you’re here.” He utters it so quietly that you thought you dreamt it. “Try not to think about it too much, okay?” 

You know what it is supposed to be. You decide to dismiss the latter and peek over the edge of the bed again, gazing down at him with softened eyes. “I’m glad you’re here too, Bobby.” 

He smiles that same smile that made your heart skip a beat. 

“Sleep, we’ll be fine here.” His eyes look into your own with mirrored softness before twisting around with his back turned away from you. “I’ll keep one eye open for the both of us.”

“Don’t let the bed bugs bite, Bobby.” He quietly responds with a chortle. 

You lay back down, listening to Bobby’s soft breaths. The ceiling is in light pink, almost white as you stare at a light fixture shaped like a cartoon cloud. This room is a teenage girl’s dream, one that you have probably seen in an early 2000’s TV show back in the day. The ones you would race back home from school to watch with its corny jokes and laugh tracks. Maybe back then you wanted a room like this, but you don’t remember much of yourself before you started drowning in the harsh freezing waves of your own mind.

You wanted to stay up for Bobby, to keep watch in case something phases through the locked door or something kicks it open. But you couldn’t help it when your heavy lids start to close, the bed is so comfortable, so soft under you. Sleep takes you in its warm embrace, enclosing you in darkness. 

You don’t dream of the yellow walls, you don’t dream of your grandfather nor the real world. You dream of that crimson city, a city draped in blood red, and how you dangled above it. For a moment you just hang there, looking from above, dangling, staring at every concrete skyscraper and still cars on the street. Then you start to move, floating above like a dove soaring in the fake clouds. 

Fluttering from building to building, you weave around and you smile, finally weightless, finally peaceful. 

Until you turn your head towards a building with glass windows that has your reflection. But it’s not you, it’s the wrong version of you. The being that has a broken neck, its head dangling over its chest, and arms that are too long with its red ropes slithering around. You try to scream, only to let out a huff, a mere breathless gasp, before you finally fall to your death.

You wake with a start before you hit the ground, sweating under the covers as your hands fly to your neck, trying to gulp in air. “Fuck.” Turning instinctively at the bedside table to look at the clock, it stayed the same, frozen. You forgot where you were for a moment. 

Nails digging into your skin, you look down on the floor to check on Bobby. He’s still sleeping, cuddling the long pillow as he drools on it. His hair is a mess, and his cheek is pressed flushed on the pillow, completely out of it. At least one of you is having a good night’s rest. Bobby could sleep anywhere it seems, even after he almost lost you. Maybe this is really how he copes, sleeping it off, leaving it all to his awake self. 

Laying against the headboard, you inhale deeply, a hand kneading at your sternum to calm your breathing. When you open your eyes, your heart stops. 

The door is wide open.

Right in the opened doorway is a shadow, long, lanky limbs stretched out abnormally, fingers grazing the top of the pink carpet. 

It’s just a mere shadow, the dark, a void staring right at you. 

It doesn’t move to get you, it doesn’t lunge or enter the room. It just stays at the doorway, watching you, face obscured by the top of the doorway when it’s too tall for it. The chair Bobby used to lock the door is neatly placed beside it, as if it was observing you before you even woke up. 

The thing unnerves you, skin prickling as it stands there as still as a rock. Like your grandfather in the sailboat room, eerie, uncanny. Not human.

It tilts its head to take a look at you when it’s too tall for the doorway, vision obscured but it doesn’t need eyes to see when it has no eyes. Its face is chillingly blank, a deep dark void to get lost into.

“What?” Your face scrunches into confusion, breathing hard, heart beating rapidly against your ribcage. Your mind tells you to run but your body refuses to move. Where would you even run when it stands in the only exit? “Bobby.” Calling for your companion, you languidly move to wake him up, body awkwardly folded whilst you don’t turn your gaze away from it as if it’ll start moving once you look away. “Bobby—fuck, Bobby.” 

He groans into the pillow, burying himself further into the bed. 

‘Sleep with one eye open my ass.’ You think to yourself, chest rising and falling in a panic, fingers digging into the sleeve of his shirt.

Something huffs at your thoughts. A laugh exhaled through the nose, something so familiar and yet in this situation terrifies you as the hair on the back of your neck stands on its ends. 

“What the fuck.” 

You heard it in your head, and around the room at the same time. It was as clear as day.

You were sure it heard your thoughts and laughed at it.

It heard your thoughts. It laughed at you.

“Bobby, Bobby, wake the fuck up.” Shaking his shoulder, he only stirs for a moment, dismissing you with a slap to your hand before stilling. “Shit, Bobby—”

It tilts its head back again, it hums deeply, a thrumming tone akin to tumbling rocks upon a mountain. You blink and it’s gone from the doorway. 

“Fuck me.” Heaving, hand on your chest and tears filling your eyes. You wait for a second before scrambling to the door to close it and lock it again with the chair. Standing back, hands up, you feel your limbs go numb. 

Did it laugh from your thoughts? Did it actually hear you think? 

He wakes up to you standing there, still frozen, shoulders taut, fingers twisted like tree branches. 

“Hey?” Bobby mumbles groggily, voice addled with sleep, timbre lower and gravelly. “You good? You’re standing in the middle of the room like a creep.” 

Your feet moved before you could think. A second later, you’re now sitting beside him on the comforter, legs tucked against yourself, staring right at the door like a kid who had a nightmare. 

Bobby’s half lidded eyes look at you curiously. “Were you sleep walking?” 

You could only shake your head. 

Sitting up, Bobby flings the blanket away from him and scooches closer to you. His hand stops halfway from touching you. “Did you have a nightmare?” 

“I don’t— I don’t know if it was real, Bobby.” Head craning towards him, you peer up at him with glassy wet eyes. 

“I’m here and I’m real.” He nods, swallowing thickly, brows knitted in concern. “Can I sit with you for a bit?” Even though he wants nothing more but to go back to sleep, you need him, and he’d rather sit with you in silence than regret not being there. Like he was with her. 

Nodding, you pull your legs impossibly closer, forehead resting atop your knees. He’s here and he’s real. 

Instead of drowning in your thoughts, you listen to him breathe, you feel his warmth bleed through his clothes and how it ebbs over to your side. You count in your head, counting all the things around you, at the forefront is Bobby, how his hair is mussed, how his shirt is wrinkled. Then you count the things you could smell, the strawberry shampoo and soap that lingers on his skin and right on the pillow, how this place smells eternally saccharine. You count your breaths, syncing it with Bobby’s inhales and exhales. 

One, two, three. 

And another, three, two, one. Inhale and exhale, like how you were taught.

Your fingers grip onto your trousers until you could feel your nails digging into your skin underneath.

Bobby has no idea how to comfort you, so he stays, the only way he knows how, and he fights to keep his eyes open, fixing the blanket over his legs to drape it over you instead. But when he tugs at it, you move and rest your head on his shoulder, cheek pressed softly against his deltoid without trepidation, without uncertainty. Your skin is clammy, sticking to his sleeve but he doesn’t care when you’re the one leaning on him this time. Bobby hasn’t noticed until now that you run incredibly warm. 

You trust him enough to lay on him, to rest your eyes and break down your walls that you’ve carefully built around you. His breath is shallow, the simple movement from you knocked the wind out of him, surprised, glad, and proud of you when he knows that took a lot out of you to do. What seems so simple, a small act of affection doesn’t come so easily for you. He knows that, he knows you.

Bobby stills, like how a cat finally sat on his lap after months of gentle coaxing and he refuses to move lest it scampers away from him. 

He sits there, watching your fingers twitch before it relaxes, until your breathing calms, and the tension in your muscles eases. Until you fall asleep against him, your breath fanning against his neck as you snore softly. 

—

You and Bobby decided to stay for a little while to recuperate, as if you two had any choice in the matter when there are no other doors inside the house that leads back to the yellow wallpaper hell or at least any of the places you’ve been in. 

You both know this place is better than any of the other rooms you’ve been through. At least the house is cozy despite its gaudy decor, and it has running water and comfy beds to sleep in. You hate to admit it but you’d rather be stuck here than in the pool rooms or the boiler rooms. At least here it’s safe, so far that is. 

You’re waiting for the shoe to drop, waiting to see the creature from your nightmares to saunter inside and break every bone in your body. Especially after what you saw last night. You’re both on high alert despite the feel of the welcoming house, rightfully so when time and time again you’ve been surprised by the entities that live in this hellscape. The hammer is always on your hip, if not on you then around Bobby’s hold. You’d find a weapon for him in the house but there aren’t any, not even kitchen knives or even a plunger. Bobby’s thinking of making his own makeshift weapon using the Hello Kitty merchandise around the house. 

After talking it out on the floor of the bedroom surrounded by pink and canned chicken soup that you two shared, you both come up with a plan. The two of you would set up perimeters around the woods, drawing up zones to make the searching easier. If the exit isn’t in the house then it must be around the woods surrounding it. So with Bobby armed with a Hello Kitty fountain pen, he uses it to carve numbers on the trees, marking each zone to be explored. Whilst you draw a map on a blank notebook you found on the shelf, the cover reminds you of the early 2000’s Lisa Frank aesthetic with the rainbows and sparkly dolphins. It took you both about three hours to map the surface just to make it easier for you two to explore the next day. 

You quickly fell into routine with Bobby.

You would shower first with him sitting by the doorway, standing guard and chatting with you as you lather the soap onto your skin that smelt like pine needles. He would talk about his life back on the surface, his cameras that littered the small apartment, the numerous tapes filled with various footage. Some were of his friends, most of them are stuff he randomly came across on his commute— a large dog being walked by a small old woman, a school bus filled with glum children, or a cloud that was shaped like a pair of sunglasses. He told you that he would lug his camera around like he was filming some sort of documentary that never went anywhere. He just liked filming things, how the light would shine on a park bench, the dappled light through the trees, the rain drenched sidewalk, or a bird flying by. He called it practice for the real deal, and you listened with a soft smile on your face, imagining all of it in your head. 

“I’d film you.” He blurted out on day three after talking to you about the day he followed a squirrel for an hour at the park because it was lugging around a whole bag of peanuts. 

“What?” You almost choked on the toothpaste. 

“Not like that—shit, I mean—!” He backtracks, realizing that saying those exact words while you’re in the bathroom as naked as the day you were born doesn’t sound right. “I mean like in a nice artsy way!” 

You could just tell that his face is pressed against the door from how loud his voice has become. “Ah.” Biting the inside of your cheek, you tamp a laugh. “Yeah, no, I–I get it, Bobby. That would be nice.” 

There’s a soft thump from his side of the door.

“You okay?” You pause from your silent giggling.

“Yep.” He groans into his hands. “Yeah, yeah, I’m good. Can you hurry up?” Good thing that there is a door in between the two of you. 

“That depends, can you tell me more about how you’ll film me?” Teasing, it earns a loud groan from the other side. 

“Oh, fuck off, hero.” You could just hear the stifled laugh behind the door.

After a shower, you would climb into bed, and with him on the comforter right on the floor. Bobby seems to have forgotten the fact that you would do alternating days with him, that he would be on the bed tonight and with you on the comforter. But every time you remind him he would dismiss you with a wave of his hand and say, “tomorrow.” You would press him of course, but he’d distract you with another story until you felt your eyes grow heavy and fall asleep to the sound of his voice. 

Bobby never complained through the search for the exit. The woods are vast but not thick enough that you would get lost in it if you take a wrong turn. The trees are properly spaced out, like it was planted like that on purpose. And they’re all identical, copy pasted onto the ground meticulously. 

On day four you found ribbons inside a cabinet when you were looking for some sort of detergent to wash the clothes with. The ribbon is bright red with pink glitters, and you used it to tie it around the trees, marking the territories that you already searched. Bobby would be at the front, wielding the hammer this time around as you follow close with your notebook, jotting down the route. You would take turns on who leads and who follows, either way you two would watch each other’s backs. 

You searched high and above, from the grass covered ground to the top of the trees that Bobby climbs to take a look at. You protested at first, but he claimed that he’s a better climber than you. Stubborn as he is he still tried to climb, until the halfway point when his hands started to get clammy and he felt vertigo. He beat himself up for it, but you reassured him with a gentle pat on his bicep. It seems that your touch is some sort of miracle cure for him when he smiles and continues to trek along the zone for that day. 

It wasn’t so bad getting stuck at this level especially when you have Bobby around. He makes surviving more tolerable, without him you would’ve gone mad days ago. But despite the deep conversations and the shared smiles and occasional laugh, you feel it stare. You feel its presence, the shadow in the doorway, the tall figure that seems to only appear for you. It’s making you feel insane whenever you see it lurking in the corner of a room while Bobby’s in the bathroom and he hasn’t noticed how you went silent. It just watches, mostly you, you’ve tried to ignore it, to let it linger there like an itch you can’t scratch. 

But it’s not always there, the entity is mostly in the kitchen, right in the corner of the dining room, as if it waits for you to take one of the warm pastries right on the table. Anticipating the moment you bite right into it like it baked the treats itself, as if it baked it just for its guests. Maybe Bobby is right to not let you eat a raspberry tart or a cookie when it could possibly keep you in here forever if you do. But as the days go on, it becomes more tempting, the old cereal and repetitive canned goods are getting tiring as the supplies dwindles. You want something sweet, something new to taste. As long as you two still have supplies left, eating the suspicious pastries is a last resort. 

The entity doesn’t seem malignant, it doesn’t seem to want to hurt you or Bobby. As long as it doesn’t come near you or over to him, you let it stay in its corner like some creep. But it doesn’t intrude on your space, it lets you be, like a benevolent steward of the pink house, making sure that you or Bobby aren’t making a mess of this place. You always make sure that you clean up after yourselves, which Bobby just naturally followed suit because you once swept some crumbs off the floor.

Once on one of the silent nights, where Bobby’s soft snores echo around the room, and you lay awake in bed, it appears again in the doorway. It just stands there, the chair neatly placed on one side with it looking right at you. Its head is tilted, peeking under the doorway again, like a parent checking on their kid during a sleepover. 

You sit up, looking right at it directly, showing no fear but the way you hold the blanket tightly atop you says otherwise. “Are you going to hurt us?” Your words are calm, soft but frayed at the edges with fear. Maybe talking to it won’t do anything, but it’s worth a try. You did it with the version of your grandfather, he didn’t reply either. But this one seems different from the others, like it could think, comprehend, maybe even speak when it wants to. “We’re just trying to find our way out of here.” 

You’re met with silence. It stays there, a shadow listening to every word. 

You tell it your name, jaw clenched as you introduce yourself. “And this is Bobby,” gesturing over to him, he still sleeps soundly. “We won’t make a mess, I promise. Thank you for letting us stay.” 

The edges of its skin fizzle into red and blue dots like static, before disappearing and returning to normal. You don’t know what that means, but you do know that it understands you to an extent. 

“Can you close the door on your way out?” 

Its head straightens up, and the door closes gently with a soft click. The sheer shock on your face stays until you can’t keep your eyes open. 

This one understood you unlike the others you’ve encountered. Somehow, beings in this place are capable of thought, capable of understanding language. It intrigues you. Maybe this place is truly the odd one out, a safe space like a save room in a game where you can catch your breath and rest. Bobby needs to know about it. 

—

You’ve never told Bobby about the shadow. Not yet anyway. You’re too afraid of him not believing you when you’re the only person who has seen this lurking shadow. There’s still a part of you that thinks the shadow was just a figment of your imagination. 

The fear is unfounded when it’s Bobby, he’ll believe you if you told him that the sky is suddenly green and the grass outside has turned blue. It’s just Bobby, the Bobby who still talks even while he’s washing his hair and got shampoo inside his mouth more times than you can count. After everything you two have been through, telling him about some lanky friendly entity shouldn’t be a problem when he would be the only person in the world that would understand you. You’re going to tell him when it’s unfair for him to be left in the dark. You just need to find the right moment.

You stare at the glowing orb between the branches in the trees, watching the dappled light filter through the leaves. You half expect for wind to brush along your cheek, a warm yet refreshing air that flutters your lashes, and yet there is none, the air is as still back in the yellow walls, at least here it’s open, giving you an illusion of freedom. 

The rustling from the canvas backpack takes your attention as Bobby hisses in between his teeth. He’s rummaging through the contents, taking out empty bottles and empty biscuit packaging onto the grass beside him. 

“What is it?” You ask, feeling the rough blades of grass between your fingers whilst you two rest after hours of searching the perimeter. Sweat trickles your back, but you refuse to take off the jacket.

Bobby exhales loudly, groaning and tipping his head back in frustration. “We ran out of almond water.” 

Your eyes narrow at him, still adjusting, vision blurred in the corners. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Bobby runs a hand through his messy hair, the scent of heavy strawberries and cream wafting in the air. “I—” he mirrors your squint, head tilted when he turns to you. “What did I tell you about looking directly at the light?”

“That I might go blind?” Blinking owlishly at him, you wince, vision returning slowly as you see him look at you disappointedly. “Sorry.”

Clicking his tongue, he takes the sunglasses hanging from the collar of his crop top before opening it and reaching for you. “May I?”

You chortle. “What for?”

“So you don’t go fucking blind.” He’s already putting the glasses over your eyes, gentle and mindful as he places the glasses over your ears and onto the bridge of your nose. “There.” Leaning back, he smiles. “Looks better on you actually.”

You gaze at him through the dark tinted glasses, smiling at him bashfully. “Thanks, Bobby.” You contemplate telling him about the being, but it doesn’t feel like the right time for it.

“No problem.” Sighing and resting his arm on his knee, he leans against the tree trunk and stares into the thicket, over to the house that peeks in between the trees. “We’re going to starve too. We only have a can of pudding and peaches left. I’ll take the peaches.”

“No, it’s okay, I can stomach it.” 

“You hate peaches, hero.” Craning his neck to you, Bobby balloons his cheeks and lets go a huff of air. “You take the pudding for tonight.”

“Or we can eat the pastries on the dinner table.” You suggest, nudging his arm with your elbow. “It doesn’t look too bad.”

“Really?” His expression flattens. “Or it’s poisoned or locks us in here forever once we take a bite.” 

“This place is the farthest thing from being magical. Wrong genres, Bobby, you of all people should know.” He cracks a smile from that. “It’s like comparing Lord of the Rings to fucking…” you try to find the right thing to compare it to. “Silent Hill.” 

“What the fuck is the other one?”

“I highly doubt that you don’t know about Lord of the Rings.”

“I know what that is, nerd, but I have no idea what the fuck a Silent Hill is.” His confusion is evident on his handsome face. “Is that a book or something? Sounds like a town in bumfuck nowhere.”

“It’s a famous horror game, Bobby.” You scoff out a laugh, brows furrowed. “You seriously don’t know what Silent Hill is?” 

Bobby shrugs, cleaning up the bottles and putting them inside the backpack. “I’m not that kind of nerd, I guess.”

Shaking your head, you wonder if he’s just not in that kind of scene. “Well it’s close to our situation, a psychological horror.” 

“Is that why you’re so good at surviving this shit? Because you’re a big fucking geek?” A slow smile tugs at his lips from his teasing, nudging your foot with his own whilst wiggling his brows. 

“A geek, really?” You can’t help but smile back. “I haven’t heard of that term in years.” 

“Whatever, geek.” 

After a beat of listening to the repetitive bird song, you hear Bobby’s stomach grumble. He groans, thumping his head against the tree trunk. He doesn’t need to look at you to know that you’re grinning at him.

“So the food in the kitchen then?” 

—

Bobby dawdled, but the sounds that his stomach is making is getting harder to ignore. He took his sweet time showering and now he has a headache. Feeling faint when he hasn’t eaten anything the whole day other than the last of the stale cereal and a drop of almond water last night, or what he thinks is nighttime when he uses sleep to determine if a day has passed.

Empty plastic bottles lay on the pink kitchen island, right beside the two plates and cups of tea you prepared. You’re starving too, Bobby knows this when your gait turned slower and how your hands shook whilst you two were out looking for a door that probably doesn’t exist. 

You’ve placed a buttered croissant on each plate, which looked to be the safest bet between the other warm pastries on the dining table. You’re pouring him a cup of tea, the liquid is light brown, and smells like any other tea you’ve had before. It doesn’t look odd in the slightest. Bobby is standing adjacent to you, right on the other side of the island, gazing at his plate and cup with increasing trepidation, but the tremble in his arms and legs makes him want to devour the whole thing. 

“Okay.” Taking a deep breath, you take your croissant from its plate. Bobby stops you with his hand around your wrist. “We’re starving, Bobby.” 

“I know, it’s just that— we do it at the same time, okay?” 

If it was truly poisoned, you two would perish at the same time. How romantic, you thought, a tragedy worthy of a Shakespearean play. 

“Okay, cheers?” You tap the flakey pastry with his before you two take a bite at the same time. 

The pastry is crunchy on the outside, warm and soft on the inside, just like how you remember it. It doesn’t taste weird, it’s good, buttery, until the after taste emerges just like in the other food you had from this place. The taste of stale bread lingers on your tongue, leaving a thin sheet of the staleness. It’s good to have something warm at least. Swallowing, you look at Bobby as he chews slowly. 

“I feel fine.” You mutter, taking a swig of the sweetened tea to help the bread go down easier. “You?”

Bobby swallows and makes a face. “That…that was actually good, it’s like the cereal and the other shit we had though. Like it was left outside for too long. How’s the tea?” He has a crumb clinging to his lower lip.

“It’s good, I’m not thirsty anymore at least. May I?” You reach over to him, gently wiping away the crumb from his lip with your knuckle. “Sorry it was bothering me.” 

Bobby looks at you with his wide blue eyes, still holding onto the half eaten croissant as his Adam’s apple bops up and down. 

“So what’s the verdict?” Taking another bite, you dismiss his expression as shock when you nonchalantly took a drink of the suspicious tea. “Bobby?”

“Yeah, uh…” clearing his throat, he stuffs the rest of the pastries into his mouth. “Eight point five out of ten.” He tries to speak with his mouth full. 

“Bobby, you’ll choke.” You’re stifling a laugh.

“You know what would go well with it though?” He’s chewing quickly, fidgeting with the can of pudding that has an easy open pull tab. “Shit, hold on.” His shorter nail can’t get a hold of the tab so you take it from his frantic hands.

“Let me try.” Shaking your head and biting your lip to quiet down your laugh, you manage to take the tab and pull. But you pull too hard and too fast that the corner of the metal can snags at your palm, cutting the still healing skin from when you burned it. “Fuck!” 

“Hero, shit!” Bobby grabs a table napkin on his way over to you and quickly takes your hand in his whilst the white napkin embroidered with kittens slowly turns red. “You’re clumsy, did you know that?”

You’re wincing and laughing at the same time, the ache throbbing from your thumb to your pinky. The sight alone would’ve made you freeze, hyperventilating and panic setting in. But with Bobby holding onto you, grasping and tending to the cut, you feel fine, there’s no numbness running through your limbs, and no fear. 

“Yeah, it’s hard to accept it as fact though.” Smiling, you flick your gaze to Bobby, who has a far away look in his eyes, staring right behind you with horror. “Bobby?”

He’s moving closer to you, an arm over your back as you turn around, finding the tall shadow looming over the other side of the dinner table. Its edges are frayed, static running all over it. It hums inside your head, an angry dissonance that rings in your ears. Bobby can feel the hum as it shakes the floor he’s standing on. 

Its head tilts down, seemingly looking at your bleeding hand despite never needing eyes to see. You just know it was looking at it, like how Bobby is standing before you, acting like your shield. It was mad that you got hurt, and it thinks Bobby was the cause.

The being is furious. Furious at Bobby.

It cocks its head to the side, moving in front of him without you two ever seeing it move. 

“What the fuck.” Bobby heaves, fear in his eyes and yet he still stands in front of you protectively. 

“Wait!” You hold out your injured hand in between them as the hum turns ear piercing. “I’m fine! It was an accident!” You talk to it like it would understand, gambling Bobby’s life and perhaps yours on something that doesn’t have any basis. It probably doesn’t like you as much as you thought. You wipe the blood away from your hand, showing it to the being, showing how it’s just a nick that doesn't run too deep. “It wasn’t his fault! I’ll heal! Okay, I’ll heal.”

Its dark edges still, calming down with every reassurance from you. 

“I’m okay.” Uttering softly, its skin is an inch away from your opened palm, you feel it, like holding out your hand above an old TV after you turned it off, feeling the fizzy buzz of static brushing along your skin despite the space in between. “See? I’m okay.” 

Bobby looks at you then at the entity like he’s high and sees some deep-seated hallucination brought out by the horrors of real life. He mouths a confused, ‘what the fuck?’ underneath his breath, a hand grasping onto your jacket, dimpling the fabric. 

It backs off, leaning away, completely calmed when the strange hum fades away, leaving only a faint ringing in your ears. 

It stands tall, the top of its head grazing the pink ceiling as it flickers out of existence like it was never there to begin with. 

Bobby flicks his eyes over to you with sheer horror and confusion on his face. 

Now is the best time to tell him you guess.

—

Your gaze stays on the nail polishes lined neatly on the vanity whilst you zone out, completely lost in your own mind when Bobby enters the room with his shoulders haunched, eyes half lidded.

“Hey,” his hand brushes along the small of your back briefly before plopping himself onto the bed. “I’m going to take a nap. I have a headache.”

Bobby took the news pretty well considering that the entity almost ripped him apart. He understood why you hid it from him when you told him that you weren’t sure that it was even real and not a combined figment of your imagination and your declining sanity. He took a minute to just breathe after what happened, and you gave him time to just take it all in before you explained everything to him, from the theory that it’s the steward of this house, to how it watched you like a parent looking after a toddler. You expected for him to hurl a plate at the wall and call bullshit, but all he did was grab another pastry and eat it all in two bites before turning to you, patting your arm and laying his forehead atop your shoulder whilst you rub a hand over his back reassuringly. It scared the soul out of him that he had to lie down for the rest of the day. You did too as he let you lay your head upon his shoulder whilst you two rested on the makeshift bed on the floor.

It’s been a few days since then, the entity started to appear for Bobby too, giving him a heart attack every time. It doesn’t move to hurt him, it just stands there, watching him like it watches you. Like it’s making sure you won’t accidentally get hurt again. Every time you or Bobby would reach for a pastry or a cup of tea, it appears, waiting for your reaction. Maybe it was the one who truly made the treats. Bobby’s getting used to it, like the entity is a pet he didn’t want to get at first but still lets onto the couch to sit beside him.

Bobby huffs against the pillow, sighing for the umpteenth time today. 

You could just tell that Bobby is increasingly getting annoyed at how pink everything is, not because it’s pink but because it’s everywhere around him. Bobby wants something new, something nice to look at. Maybe that’s why he always looks forward to going outside and searching for the door because there are trees and greenery instead of Hello Kitty and fluffy pink decor. Something more relaxing than the ‘in your face’ decorations. And where the entity can’t go as far as the front door, either giving you space or it can’t leave. But even then, even when you’re outside, you could see the shadow look out from the kitchen window and watch you trek along with Bobby. 

“All this pink is giving you a headache, huh?” Turning to him, you see him press his cheek against a Hello Kitty pillow you embrace every night, the heel of his palm digging into the crease between his brows.

“No, I think I’m crashing from the sugar rush.” His blue eyes are dull as he embraces the pillow against his cheek tighter. “I ate too many cookies.”

You chortle, “I think Mr. Kitty would be ecstatic that you like his baking.”

“Mr. Kitty?” Bobby scrunches his nose. 

“Yeah, I named it. Took a page from your book. It’s better than what you came up with, what was it again? The shuffler?”

“Yeah,” Bobby hugs your pillow closer, eyes fluttering close. He probably doesn’t want to think about that mirrored version of you right now. The one that tried to take you away from him.

Bobby sounds defeated. You could attribute it to his headache but he sounds utterly hopeless. You know it has something to do with the grim situation when you still haven’t found a doorway back. It’s been a week and a half since you entered this place together, hand in hand. Or maybe it’s been more than that.

You thought he fell asleep and that was the end of the conversation until he huffs out a breath.

“I’ve got an idea.” His eyes open, gaze flickering to the polishes on display in front of you. The light through the pink curtains illuminates him in dusty pink. “D’you want me to paint your nails? I’m pretty good at it.” He blinks like he’s trying to recall something, the tip of his tongue poking in between his lips. “I think I am?”

Smiling tenderly, you glance at the nail polishes that are all in different shades of pink. “Only if you let me paint yours.” You answer with a teasing smirk.

He thinks for a few seconds, cheek flushed against the Hello Kitty pillow that he’s still hugging that smells like you. “Sure, but only the darkest pink, the lighter one would wash me out.”

The thought eases you slightly, maybe you two just needed to do something different for once after doing the exact routine for eleven days straight, or what you think is eleven days. 

“Okay.” Grabbing the darkest hue out of the bunch just like he asked, you choose a lighter pink that reminds you of ballet shoes that have a slight shimmer. “What about this?” Crossing the distance, you show him the clinking bottles.

Bobby gestures in a come hither motion, telling you to sit beside him on the bed. “Let me see.” Propping himself up by his elbows, Bobby places the pillow behind him as he lounges. “Yeah, this’ll do.” 

“I was only joking, y’know.” Sitting by his hips, the bed dips as you join him. 

“Nah, it’s not like we both have anything better to do.” His palm opens, taking the lighter shade. “Let me do yours first.” 

“Okay,” you hardly have enough energy to protest when you’re as spent as him, as bored as him. “Bobby?”

“Yeah?” Shaking the bottle, Bobby opens the polish. It doesn’t smell like how it usually is, the chemical scent doesn’t waft around the room. It doesn’t smell like anything, it’s almost unnerving. 

“Why do you think Mr. Kitty likes us?” 

“I don’t think he likes us, hero. He just tolerates us.” His fingers flex, telling you to place your hands in his to paint your nails. “He lets us stay because he has no choice. Like he makes sure we don’t ruin his house.” The polish feels cold atop your nail whilst he spreads a thin coat on it. 

“You think he’s capable of being inherently kind?”

“I don’t know, maybe.” Bobby replies, concentrating on painting your nails. The tip of his tongue pokes in between his lips, trying to do both as best as he can. “Try not to think about it too much, okay?” He flicks at your forehead, giving you that lopsided smile you like. “It’ll hurt your pretty brain.” 

“You think I have a pretty brain?” Your tone lowers, gazing at him through your lashes. 

Bobby’s blue eyes peers up at you with a sly smirk. “Yeah, you’re smart and pretty, therefore you have a pretty brain.” He moves to take your other hand, touch featherlight as he paints. 

“Are you high again, Bobby?” You ask with a bashful lilt.

“Nope, stone cold sober.” He sends you a wink that makes your breath hitch in your throat. You’re suddenly very aware at how close he is, and that you’re both on the bed together, knees knocking against his, breaths mixing in between. A voice in your head tells you to lean away, and you move away an inch from him. “Stop fidgeting, you’re going to ruin my handiwork.”

—

You wake again in the middle of sleep, this time, Mr. Kitty wasn’t around, he’s not standing in the doorway keeping watch. What woke you up wasn’t the nightmare you had, it was the pressure around your hand. It was a familiar warmth around your palm as it dangles over the edge of the bed.

Peeking over the edge of the frilly bedsheets, you squint at the sleeping form below, the warm lamps have been dimmed after you complained about it being too bright. It was either Bobby or the being that lives with you two that did it, either way, neither of them took the credit for it. 

As your sleep heavy eyes hone in on the Bobby shape below, you see that his hand is extended up, following it, you see him holding onto you in his sleep. 

His fingers are intertwined with yours, keeping them in place whilst you both slept. Whilst his painted nails match yours only in a darker hue. You should let go, to shake him off and roll back into bed. Your insides tell you to pull away, a tug at the back of your mind, like a forgotten memory that you’re trying to recall but couldn’t. It should feel wrong, the intimacy of it, that you shouldn’t be the recipient of it. Still, you don’t move your hand away, instead, you scooch closer to the edge of the mattress, closing the distance to make the position more comfortable. 

Bobby woke up first that day, his hand still in yours, he didn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day. 

You don’t mention it to him, but he knows that you woke up to see his hand around your own when you kept staring at his palm the whole time. He doesn’t mention it either, it was both a blessing and a curse.

But something is nagging inside your head, like you have forgotten something that you can’t recall. Whatever it is, it eats at you from the inside out.

Winter has come and gone much slower than you would’ve liked. You expect you’ve grown more silver in your hair in the process of memorizing the chain stitch and the plait stitch and the split stitch. Melted snow is all it takes to return the stone walls of King’s Landing to its former glory. While the Summer months are not your favorite, Spring brings you some reprieve from the cold and damp mornings you’ve suffered through. The lack of fresh air is what’s cumbersome, not the months themselves. You couldn’t deny your father had his responsibilities but you missed the days of your childhood where you would reside at Summerhall. When the sun would kiss your skin as you rode along with your cousins. Eat far too much and spend little time sleeping.

You were going mad stuck inside your room. Emerging to break fast or watch the knights practice with their longswords only if Valarr was absent doing whatever it was that princes do. It was a boring affair, simply watching as the council discussed important things as you poured the wine. In short, simple words, you needed out of the castle.

Your footsteps echo throughout the corridor as a Kingsguard follows. Between staring at the sky and the velvet carpet he’s your only company aside from your thoughts. It’s not that you hold any ill will towards Ser Donnel. In fact you chose him over Ser Roland when you barely reached his waist. You just don’t want your visit to get back to your father so quickly. His loyalties lie with the Prince first after all. 

Ambition is said to be the greatest trait of a Targaryen but the easier it is to make out the outline of a dragon carved into the wood of a door, the more you question if it’s truly wise to go against your lord father’s wishes. He doesn’t have to say it explicitly for you to understand what you are doing is wrong. A servant knocks for you. Announcing your arrival and bowing gracefully out of the way so you may enter.

You smile kindly and brace your shoulders. Targeting the figure sitting beside a window depicting the Conquest. Brutal of course, with the panes stained a deep crimson to mimic blood. Much like the image of  Aegon, first of his name, the man below the picture has silver-white hair and a beard to match. His once surly expression changes as you curtsey. 

“Your Grace.”

“My little Rhaenyra.” He waves his hand, his crows feet stretching further and further. When you rise he opens his arms. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

He shoos away Ser Donnel who was once at your heel. The metal of his armor clammers along with the creak of the door to the study. Books pile to the ceiling, as tall citadels. Spines worn with a thick smell of parchment and firewood. Your favorite book of poetry belonged first to your grandfather. A grand epic he took with him across Westeros. He’s read it recently. It lay open next to an unfinished game of Cyvasse on the board.

Embracing him gives you the chance to get a whiff of the herbs on his person. You linger and wrap your arms tighter around his neck. Your warmth seeps straight through his chemise to his bones.  

“It grieves me that you say such a thing.” You say and finally part.

He lets out a hearty laugh before coughing into his fist. He clears his throat with wine. “Grieves you?”

“You make it sound as if I don’t visit you often,” you tease. Resuming the strategic game set for two. The pieces are smooth between your fingers.

“I apologize for my grave error. Age has clearly affected my memory but if I recall correctly, it’s been a sennight since your fit at dinner.”

Your eyes dart up as you set a piece forward. “It was not a tantrum. I do not throw tantrums,” you repeat. “I was simply frustrated with my father. Valarr was of no help to me either, seeing as he agreed with his decision.”

He sits up rather excitedly to survey the board then slinks back down to lounge on his chair. Only after changing the position of his bishop of course.“They simply want what’s best for you.”

“Do you believe this is what’s best for me?” You rebut by taking one of his pieces.

“Ah…” He strokes his beard. “Are you asking me as your grandfather or your king?”

“Does it matter? You cannot be one without the other.”

“Wise answer,” He chortles. He’s stalling and you know it’s for his amusement as you sit on the edge of your seat. Smacking his lips together he takes another swig of wine. “No, I do not agree with his decision.” He watches as your eyes light up but before you can speak he interrupts with a swift move of his pawn. “But it’s not my place to argue with your father when he is correct in thinking your time could be well spent with your Septa.”

You lose your composure and sputter. Losing yet another pawn.  “I have practically perfected my embroidery. I attend all of the council's meetings. I can practically recite to you the history of the dance of the dragons—”

“Do such lovely sounds come from a young maiden or a pig? And how fortunate for the people to have such a competent heir.”

You bite back a scoff and instead sink your teeth into your tongue. The board is quickly becoming your battlefield. You try a different approach this time.

“I understand my father’s concerns but doesn’t it seem strange I haven’t left King’s Landing since I was six and ten? We look as if we are hiding something.”

“Are we not?”

It irks you that the men in your family have inherited his nonchalance. You might as well be arguing with all four of them. “What is there to see if I’m hidden inside a carriage?” you mutter. Retreating your queen behind a knight.  

“Do you plan to stay there then, for the entire tourney?”

“No, of course not.” 

He sighs as he puts you in check. Deeply satisfied. “Tell me why you really want to go and I may consider speaking with my son.”

You stare at the board. Chewing on the inside of your cheek before lifting your head. His gaze is expectant and if there is a single person you cannot run away from, it’s your grandsire. The hard edges of his face have always been there but never unkind, never with you. It’s moments like these where you wonder if you’ll measure up to be as great as Daeron the Good. Twirling the signet ring around your middle finger, you roll the words around on your head first before opening your mouth.  

“I don’t feel as if I am fulfilling my duties as my father’s heir.”

His eyebrows raise but he quickly schools his expression. Even in your distress you look as elegant as ever. Beautiful like your mother, poised like your father. Perhaps that’s why you were born first. You smooth out your dress though there isn’t a blemish or a wrinkle. He’s patient, even as time goes by. Enough for the sun to peek through the window and cast a shadow across the tile. Dark ivory pieces standing still with dust glittering like confetti at their assured victory.

“I do not feel like a Targaryen,” you finish. 

Nail snagging on the crevice of a rook as you traced the deep carvings of the tower. “I am more like one of these.” Shiny and pretty to behold. “Did you know that Aegon is being taken to squire by Daeron? I have not seen Egg since…well since my uncle’s last visit.”

Your grandfather humors you. Pretending to fiddle with his cuff. “What is he now…”

“Nine, your Grace.”

He whistles. “How time flies.”

Correspondence with Egg is not the same as being at Summerhall. You would risk the chance of being disowned by your father just to see him again. To feel like part of the family instead of a prisoner of war. 

“I feel myself going manic preparing to serve the nine kingdoms when I haven’t stepped foot outside in a century. House Baratheon, House Lannister—knights who have sworn allegiance to our family. How am I to have their respect if I’m like a general who has never seen battle?”

He considers you much like he does when he’s surrounded by his council. “Will you do as your father instructs if I let you go?”

“Yes.” You could faint whether he denies or accepts your request.

“Then you had better have preparations made while I talk to him.” He lifts from his chair with a loud groan which neglects to divert your attention away from his smile. “It is, after all, a young lady’s nameday.”

You leap from your chair. Following after him before he can go too far. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” 

“I’ve only committed to speak with him, my love,” he guffaws. Happily letting you shower him in kisses along his cheek and temple like he would when you were a babe. “I make no promises. Your father is as stubborn as an ox.” You don’t listen. Just continue to squeeze him so tight you may break his bones.

Who could say no to the King?

He calls your name just as you’re about to reach the door. When you turn, he moves leisurely,  your queen now a shield for your king. Effectively moving your pieces out of check. You walk back with minimal resistance when he coaxes you back to finish the game. You gladly place him under checkmate. 

-

“How much farther?” You groan. Lolling your head carelessly backwards. At a distance, it would be easy to mistake yourself for a night watchman recently beheaded. Your backside aches from hours of travel which comes as a great shock taking into consideration how much you used to enjoy your daily rides.

Light dapples along your skin from beams of sunlight that manage to slip through the trees. A perfume of flowers wafts in and out over your nose. The once bright petals you had weaved into your hair along with Vhagar’s mane have wilted and faded in color. Vhagar, your mare, with a shiny coat like grain rides along with several other horses. Including a bay with a stripe down its nose and much broader topline.

Valarr scoffs, earning a glare from you and a swift swat on the shoulder as you miss his head when he angles his reins in the opposing direction of your beloved horse. 

“Not much longer. If you wanted, you could turn back now. I would happily send you on your way to your treacherous grandsire with Ser Donnel.”

You lead your horse forward. Frowning slightly. “You’re not still angry with me, are you?” 

Your father, Prince Baelor, doesn’t turn to look at you but he does acknowledge you by making room along the path so Vhagar isn’t stepping in mud. Valarr follows suit with something akin to arrogance. Trotting on the opposing side of your father with his nose stuck in the air. 

“Do you expect him to forgive you with those sad eyes of yours?” You glare at him again over your father’s horse as he continues. “Did you not go above him and speak to grandfather?”

“I wanted someone to talk to.” You reason. Feeling guilt form at the pit of your stomach. “I was upset.”

“Oh, and he just happened to take pity on you and demand our lord father take you with us?”

“Somehow I find it concerning that a man of his age has more reason than you and this entire army combined.” You gesture to the Kingsguard. Not bothering to apologize when you know for certain they were reluctant to have you join them as well. You’ve been braving the pain to prove you aren’t as much of a nuisance as they believe. Though the pain in your leg has steadily grown sharper over time. Tiny needles pricking underneath your skin.

He holds a hand to his chest. Gasping loudly enough that his gelding neighs along with him in a similar fashion. “Are you calling me an idiot? For that matter, our father?”

You backtrack quickly at his precise dagger of words. “You know that’s not what I meant.” Leaning back you try to catch your father’s attention with a softer approach. “Please, I don’t want you to be cross with me the entire journey there. I only did it because—”

“Disobeyed you mean,” Valarr interrupts. Throwing daggers at you now, not just with his words. “You know how dangerous it is for you to leave the castle and you deliberately manipulated grandfather to get your way.” 

“How did I manipulate him?” You recoil. Forgetting your quest for forgiveness momentarily to argue with your brother. “It’s the same way you run to mother when you’re in distress.”

“Don’t bring my mother into this.”

“She’s my mother too and may I remind you I left her womb first and by birthright—!”

“Birthright my arse you’ve been a nuisance since the day you were born.”

“Funny, because that’s what Bloodraven says about you.”

“I—”

“Alright!” Your father shouts. Spooking the horses as well as the two of you. Practically melding with your stead with how far forward you both leaned to reach each other. You instantly sit back up and look down at your reigns. 

“That is enough. I’m not happy with either of you at the moment but your guilt will suffice in quelling my anger. Until then, I want total and complete silence while we wait to reach your uncle. Is that understood?”

You nod and so does Valarr. When your father’s attention returns to the road ahead, you resolve yourself to sulking. Lady Kiera of Tyrosh, your sister-in-law, seems empathetic to your plight. She gives you a weak smile behind your brother’s back. Her pink curls as soft as her demeanor. 

Perhaps you shouldn’t have declined to ride in the carriage with her. She would have been much better company.

-

“Aegon!” 

It was once possible you could swing your leg over your horse and be done with it but now, you must wait for Valarr who despite his sour attitude days ago, gingerly sets you down with a pleased expression. Your knee nearly buckles as you stand on numb legs. A wince of pain is more than enough to tell your brother he needs to stay with you a moment longer. The sharp stab stays right at your joint before weeding out into a dull ache you can manage. You breathe in relief before nodding to let him know you’re alright now but he doesn’t retreat immediately.

Valarr acts as though he’s the one who’s older by the way he guards you like a dog. Even now you can feel his rapt attention as he holds his hand out just in case you need it. You had hoped he would be more preoccupied with his wife now that they were married but alas, you were wrong. He reminds you to be careful before letting you go to Egg. Watching the two of you diligently before passing the task to Ser Donnel who keeps a few paces away. 

Egg is taller now but that’s to be expected. He’s growing into a young adult. He practically barrels into your arms after you steady yourself against your saddle. 

“Did you get my letter?” You wheeze. Wondering if this is how your grandsire feels when you greet him. Patting his back you readily accept him as a temporary crutch. Laying your head to rest on his silky hair.

“Only a few days ago. I suppose the raven got lost.” 

You laugh, “I suppose so.”

He grins having lost some of the chubbyness in his cheeks. When you reach out to pinch them, there’s not much skin to latch onto.  “Come, say hello to your cousin before he gets jealous.” With a gentle hold, you guide him to Valarr. Your father already preoccupied with greeting his own brother. “Where is Daeron?” 

“Inside, I think. He hasn’t slept since father told him we would be entering the lists.”

“Ah, I see.” You say slowly. Finding it all too possible Daeron drank himself into a stupor at the news but that didn’t explain the absence of your third cousin. 

Seeing no sign of him causes you to frown and Egg picks up on your unease. He doesn't have the chance to ask what’s wrong when his father appears. It’s for your own amusement that you hug him tightly knowing he isn’t one for public displays of affection. Your uncle Maekar stands there awkwardly as he pats your back when he realizes you haven’t let go. After an appropriate amount of torture you put on an innocent smile. He quickly takes the opportunity to break for freedom and ushers all of you inside Summerhall.

A sudden wave of nostalgia washes over you as you see familiar tapestries that were once blurry images in your mind. There are new additions but not much has changed. Tan bricks instead of grey ones. A horizon of forest as far as the eye could see.

“Were you excited?” 

“For your arrival?” Egg answers in stride. The two of you trailing behind everyone else.

“No, no. To squire for Daeron. It’s a big accomplishment for a boy your age.”

He puffs out his chest. “Yes but I’m not a boy.”

“Oh?”

“I’m almost ten. By definition I’m closer to manhood. That’s what my father says.”

“Is that right? I didn’t know you became a man by the age of nine. What a strange phenomenon.” Wrapping an arm around him you pay no mind to the embarrassment you may cause him. “Here I am thinking you should always stay the same. Growing is for trees, not boys.”

He grunts as he attempts to break away. You smile wider. He barely reaches your hip. “How could you compare me to a tree? What should I call you then a…” His nose scrunches as he thinks of a possible retort.

You click your tongue. Sighing as you feign disapproval. “It’s not wise to insult a lady.”

“I don’t see one.”

“It’s because you are not tall enough.” You ruffle his hair. Fondly stroking your fingers through the strands.

Dinner is served in a grand room. A scent of wood and meat permeate through the walls instead of the pine that greeted you when you first arrived. It’s only then that you realize how empty your insides feel. Gurgling and possibly eating itself. In your haste to eat the venison so meticulously prepared and drink to quench the dryness of your tongue you forget to be on guard. Egg’s rambling are like small tales amid bites. Your father and uncle jesting with one another as if no time had passed. Then you feel it. That prickle against your skin. 

It’s difficult not to notice Aerion Targaryen because he always makes himself known. 

“Aegon,” You turn. Pretending not to feel anything but full. “Will you show me to the stables when you are finished? I’d like to make sure Vhagar is well fed.” 

Egg, bless his heart. Slurps down what’s left on his plate. “I’m ready now. Can I ride her?”

“Only if you’re gentle with her. She’s had quite the long journey.”

His excitement is not enough to squash your disdain.

-

Egg has long since gone to bed despite his weak attempts to persuade your uncle Maekar. He was practically glued to Vhagar from the moment you helped him sit on the saddle. It wasn’t a question of how tired he was but how long he could manage to keep his eyes open and evidently, that wasn’t very long. To make him feel better, you promised to wake up early enough to let him have a chance to ride around on her again in the field by the river instead of the courtyard. 

One by one your family drifted off to their respective chambers. By the time Daeron left you knew it was only a matter of time before Aerion crossed the room to corner you. The fireplace is alight but dwindling down to embers without someone to feed the fire. It’s now the only source of light aside from the moon. 

You don’t cower as Aerion takes the place of Daeron’s now empty seat. He moves with such callousness. Thick red blocks of light shadowing his face.

“Did you plan on ignoring me all evening? Or is this your way of showing me you’re happy to see me?” He crosses one leg over his lap. He looks entirely too happy. 

What you wouldn’t give to be a man.

“I think you are sorely mistaking the advances of women if this is how you believe we flirt.”

His eyes sparkle with delight. He leans forward. Slender fingers resting on his chin. “So you’re upset with me, is that it?”

You lean back. “My lack of correspondence would speak for itself, wouldn’t it?”

He clicks his tongue. Cocking his head to the side as if to survey you better in the firelight. “I do find it quite perplexing that you find my brother’s babbling appealing. What does Egg discuss with you? Pretty flowers?” 

“What do you want, Aerion? I’m exhausted and now thoroughly annoyed.” You glower as you fiddle with your ring. Subtly lifting your finger.

“When did you become so disagreeable?”

“I imagine around the same time I caught sight of you.”

His face finally falls. The darkness in his eyes scares you. You don’t move although every fiber of your being tells you to flee. 

You can remember the boy you used to play swords with. In fields so grand it felt like the world was too small to witness your greatness. Fruit dripping down your fingers as you shared tall tales beneath the trees after sneaking more food out of the kitchen. Like Egg, he had slick silver hair and bright eyes. A glad child. There is no remnant of that boy anymore. No, now he demands and takes. 

Your stare doesn’t shake as your hands do, hidden beneath your thighs now. Aerion’s breath is hot as it fans your nose. “You are only being stubborn in putting up this facade.”

You swallow before speaking. “I did not come all this way to see you and I will not pretend I care for you in the slightest. We are not children, Aerion.”

His eyes dart back and forth. A deep set of violet that contrast your irises. Forgiveness does not come as easy to you as it once did. A scraped knee was something, a detriment to the rest of your life was another. 

You wonder if he ponders over the day as much as you do. If he feels a granule of remorse while you lie in bed and cry with anger about the lot in life you’ve been given. You can still feel it. The moment so vivid in your mind that even just glancing at the edge of the valley is enough to make you feel sick.

You tense instinctively when his hand twitches, but his hand, whatever the destination, does not reach it. 

A startled call of your name has you looking for the source. Under an archway holding onto a cane with thin embellishments of gold, Valarr’s shadow paints itself on the wall like a splatter of blood.

Breaking the stalemate, a puff of air hits your cheek as Aerion kisses it. Lifts from his chair and bids you goodnight. They watch each other. Dragon against dragon. For a moment, they stare at each other, like rabid dogs fighting over a carcass. Not until Aerion has disappeared into the hallway, does Valarr come to your side.

Robert knows you’re teasing the poor guy after he told you a joke that he was for sure would be a hit with you being someone who can talk to animals.

“Giraffes don’t even like the smell of alcohol.” You continue, and Robert stifles a laugh as he takes the leftovers from your hands to take it out to the trash can, exactly what you were just about to do before Sonar walked in with a pep in his step.

Sonar scrunches his nose, eyes blinking at you, as if perturbed at your reaction to his brilliant joke. “What? It’s— it’s just a joke, y’know funny haha?”

Robert snorts, hands brushing along yours, taking the boxes and the coffee cup, revealing the ring around your finger that sends his heart aflutter.

Your wedding ring glimmers under the fluorescent lights of the break room, the golden band that’s identical to his. Robert’s mind still hasn’t gotten over the whirlwind wedding you two had, one day, on a random Saturday morning, he suddenly just had the urge to marry you. He woke up to you drenched in sunlight, sleeping soundly, lashes fluttering, mouth slightly agape as your foot twitches underneath the covers. He doesn’t know what made him want to elope with you suddenly, whether it’s your fingers weakly grasping at his bicep whilst you were still asleep, or the way you uttered his name so sweetly while dreaming of him. Whatever it was, Robert wanted to marry you right then and there.

He woke you up with kisses on your skin, and the way you groaned and waved him away despite clinging closer to him with your face pressed to his bare chest. He said the simple words, “hey, you wanna get married today?” And it woke you up better than a freshly baked croissant would.

You didn’t ask “what?” or “right now?” Instead, you smiled in that saccharine way, the same smile after he kisses you, the same hazy smile after he showed you how much he loved you. And your hands slid above his heart, the pads of your fingertips drumming softly against his flushed skin as you answered with an undoubted, “yes.”

A week and a half after the courthouse wedding with you in a white dress you had stored in your closet for years but never really found the occasion to wear it at, and with him in his best white button up that he probably only wore once, you two swore your love before a judge. Chase and Mal were the only witnesses, Chase because he’d throw a fit if he wasn’t invited, and he’s an important person in Robert’s life and yours. Malevola because she was the first to answer your very hasty text that said, ‘courthouse at 3pm, wear something nice.’ She did wear something nice, but she thought you were suing someone and that you chose her as your lawyer, she had a briefcase and everything.

The others came in late, and you two were already sealing the deal with a kiss. It wasn’t a grand wedding with thousands of flowers, or a buffet provided by a catering company. But it was magnificent, it was a proof of your love, it’s something you and Robert could call yours. Instead of hundred dollar bouquets and a wedding that would cost an arm and a leg, you two signed the papers in front of the people you care about and right after had a reception at a nearby burger place before coming home with Robert as he carried you inside bridal style like in the movies. The pictures from the whole event turned out nice and Robert is still in the process of placing each picture inside a photo album to surprise you with once he finishes it.

“Robertson?” His thoughts are popped by an intern with a clipboard in hand as she peeks over the doorway, looking anxious and fidgety.

“Yeah?” You and Robert simultaneously turn at the same time.

Robert is elated, like drifting on a cloud as a lopsided smile tugs at the corner of his lips.

Chortling, you pat Sonar on his arm before sidling next to your husband. A title you’re happy and proud to call him as. “Which Robertson? Mister or missus?” Grasping Robert’s arm, you hug him, cheek pressed against his bicep as you grin at the intern before staring at Robert with that same soft smile you only show him.

“Either way it sounds like you two are in trouble.” Sonar teases behind you, plopping himself on your chair and eating the rest of the fries.

“No trouble at all.” She answers with a wobbly smile.

“You’re from HR right?” You ask kindly, trying to ease the poor intern.

“Yea–yes, they asked me to fetch you to sign some papers?”

The conversation goes in the back of Robert’s mind as he gazes at you through his fogged up mind that’s filled with you— your scent, your voice, and how your hands grip sweetly at his arm whilst the ring around your finger twinkles under the light. He really wants to come home with you, and it’s only one pm.

“Robbie?” Looking up at him, you tug at his hand gently, bringing him out of his stupor. “You okay, baby?”

“Y–yeah,” clearing his throat, Robert lets you lead him outside. “Wait, where are we going?”

Giggling, you intertwine your fingers with his as you follow the intern. “You weren’t paying attention, hm?” Brow raised, you nudge him teasingly. “HR said we need to sign some papers since we got married and that I need to sign something too because I legally changed my name.”

“You changed your name?” It seems that he’s still in the haze of the honeymoon you two spent two weeks in bed with the shutters closed and the phones turned off.

You squeeze his hand, laughing lightheartedly as the sound bounces off the corridor. “Yeah, my last name.” You stop abruptly, taking him by his arms. “Shit, did the potion wear off.” Feigning a gasp, you cup his face. “Oh no, the real Robert is waking up from my love potion.”

Robert chuckles, a grin spreading on his handsome face as he holds onto your hands that’s cradling his cheeks. “I don’t think I ever needed it, sweetheart.”

“Fuck yeah, my plan worked.” You answer with a grin, saying it softly as you lean up for a kiss right in the middle of the hallway.

“Oh, I’m a willing participant, Mrs. Robertson.” Uttering above your lips, you two hear a nervous cough from across the other side of the hallway as the intern stands there idly.

“Sorry.” Wincing, a tad embarrassed, you pull away and tug Robert away. “Please don’t tell your bosses about that.”

“I’ve seen worse HR violations in this place.” She mutters under her breath, opening the doors for you and Robert.

—

“So, where’s the wife?” Flambae asks above the clicking glasses and ear drum bursting singing from the karaoke.

“Headache.” Robert hides his giddiness behind the rim of his glass filled with Amber liquid.

Wife, he’ll never get tired of that.

“You’re already giving her a headache after just a month of marriage?” Invisigal adds, snorting over her beer. “I call dibs on her after the divorce.”

“There will be no divorce.” Robert’s brows furrow, shaking his head as he frowns. Just the thought of it squeezes at his heart.

“You know what they say, Robert,” Chase slurs, drink sloshing in his wobbly grip. “Happy wife, happy life. Marriage is easyyy.”

“How would you know?” Mal scoffs, taking a bite of her slider. “You’ve never been married.”

“Who said I was never married?” Chase narrows his reddened eyes at her, whilst the whole table silences from shock. “What? Surprised that someone actually managed to tie me down? It was a night out in Vegas back in—”

“Hello, room for one more?” You appear from behind Chase, materializing in front of Robert as colour suddenly appears to be brighter in his vision.

“Hey, Mrs. Robertson!” The whole table greets you, raising their glasses at you as you smile.

“Thought you couldn’t make it.” Robert’s smile is brighter than the stage lights as his hand extends for you to take. His eyes never leave your own, watching you go around the corner of the table over to him with that same sweetened smile.

“I toughed it up, I couldn’t miss this.”

“Alright, since you’re late,” Sonar raises his empty beer mug at you. “you’re buying the next round, Mrs. Robertson!”

Sighing, you shake your head with a subtle smile. “You guys look like you’ve had enough though.”

There’s a chorus of, “Nos” and shaking of heads. But Robert's attention is only on you as the yellow light of the bar shines just behind your head, blanketing you in a halo of light whilst you smile and banter with the Z-team.

—

“I never thought Chase could out drink me.” You groan, plopping onto the sofa with half lidded eyes and smelling like a bar. “That old man.” Muttering, you lift up your arms for Robert as he stands beside the sofa. “C’mere, Robbie, hug the alcohol out of me.”

“That’s not how it works, honey.” Nose scrunching, he chuckles, picking up your foot and taking off your heels for you gently.

You watch his hands, every movement of his lean and nimble fingers sends you in a tizzy. “Y’know I’m not too drunk.” You insinuate with a wiggle of your brows.

“You went into a stranger’s car when you thought it was mine. The other car was an entirely different make and color.” He replies with his eyes full of endearment, while he takes off the other heel, as gentle as the last one. “And you kissed Beef, you left kiss marks all over his fur.”

Sure enough, Beef walks in, smiling and wiggling his tail happily at you whilst his fur is covered in numerous kiss marks.

“Yeah, but I always do that. He said that he loves us so much and that we should stay home forever with him.” Pouting, your legs wrap around Robert’s waist, hooking around and pulling him in with the heels of your feet until he’s properly standing in between your legs that he has to put his arms on the side of your head so as to not fall atop you. He’s so warm, and he smells like your coconut shampoo as his russet hair dangles above you. “Baby, my baby boy, you need a haircut.” Fingers raking through his tresses, you utter your words in a sing-song tune whilst gazing at him lovingly.

“You gonna cut it for me?” You could see your tipsy self in his eyes that softens for you.

“Unless you want to be bald.” You poke his cheek, earning a gruff scoff from him. “I don’t think you’ll ever forgive me for that because you don’t have the head shape for it.”

“You never know, I could rock it.”

“Yeah, but I love your hair far too much. Where would I hold onto if I shave it all off?” Pouting, your warm hands finds his sides, sliding underneath his shirt as you run your palms all over his lean stomach. “Off, please.”

“Would you forgive me if I said no?” Robert tilts his head, pecking your forehead sweetly.

“Oh, you’re a killjoy.” Huffing, you decide to rest your hands on his sides instead, just feeling his warmth through his shirt. “But you've been awfully happy recently. Like…” you try to find your words through the fog of alcohol. “Like really in a good mood. Very very happy.”

“Am I not always in a good mood?”

“Sometimes you sulk. I’ve seen you wallow at your desk.” You squeeze his sides lovingly. “Now that I think about it, that’s what caught my eye.”

“I charmed you with my sulking, hm?” Humming, Robert perches between your legs, knees digging into the plush seat, resting there when the small of his back started to ache.

“Yeah,” you giggle, chasing his lips as he teases by leaning away from you, earning a deep pout from you. “C’mon, just a kiss, Robbie.”

“You wanna know why I’m in a good mood?” His head tilts, eyes gazing at your lips briefly before flicking to your eyes again.

“Yeah, because whatever it is I want to recreate it so you’re always all smiley and happy. I love it when you smile, Robert. You’ve got a pretty smile.”

“There’s one thing you can do to make me smile more.”

“Tell me.” You tug him by his belt loop, until he’s sitting on your lap, legs spread on your sides as he cups the back of your head, gazing into your eyes. “I’ll do anything for you.”

“You can always marry me again.”

The widest grin spreads across your face. “Done.”

Robert feels his heart skip a beat at your immediate response. His knuckles drags slowly over your cheek, gentle and loving as he hears you hum in content, feeling the rumble in your chest. “You’re the reason why, y’know? Why I’m in a good mood.”

“I figured.” You feel him shift his weight, and you already know what he’s planning before he does it. You don’t stop him though.

“I’ve never…really thought I’d love someone as much as you,” Robert says wholeheartedly, confessing, showing you his heart that beats for you. “more so get married.”

“On a whim, might I add.”

He chuckles. “Yeah, my name suits you well.” Robert makes his move, one second he’s in your lap, the next he has your back on the couch cushions as you look up at him whilst he looms over you with a lopsided smile. “There, better.”

“Much better. And good, because I’m never changing it. It’s mine now. I’m Mrs. Robertson forever and ever!” Your nose nudges at his temple as you feel him smile above your clavicle. Your fingers rake through his hair, while you’re both utterly blissed out.

“I don’t want you to give it back anyway.” Pecking your jaw, he rests his head right there over your heart, inhaling you in and letting your warmth ebb through him. “Just waking up right next to you every morning makes me happy, sweetheart, you don’t really need to do much.”

“But I’ll keep doing stuff that makes you happy though. Forever and ever and ever.” Giggling, giddy from the sweet moment, your legs wrap around his hips, locking him in place. Robert doesn’t seem to want to get out of it anytime soon. “I love you, Mr. Robertson.”

“And I love you too, Mrs. Robertson.”

Robert knows you’re teasing the poor guy after he told you a joke that he was for sure would be a hit with you being someone who can talk to animals.

“Giraffes don’t even like the smell of alcohol.” You continue, and Robert stifles a laugh as he takes the leftovers from your hands to take it out to the trash can, exactly what you were just about to do before Sonar walked in with a pep in his step.

Sonar scrunches his nose, eyes blinking at you, as if perturbed at your reaction to his brilliant joke. “What? It’s— it’s just a joke, y’know funny haha?”

Robert snorts, hands brushing along yours, taking the boxes and the coffee cup, revealing the ring around your finger that sends his heart aflutter.

Your wedding ring glimmers under the fluorescent lights of the break room, the golden band that’s identical to his. Robert’s mind still hasn’t gotten over the whirlwind wedding you two had, one day, on a random Saturday morning, he suddenly just had the urge to marry you. He woke up to you drenched in sunlight, sleeping soundly, lashes fluttering, mouth slightly agape as your foot twitches underneath the covers. He doesn’t know what made him want to elope with you suddenly, whether it’s your fingers weakly grasping at his bicep whilst you were still asleep, or the way you uttered his name so sweetly while dreaming of him. Whatever it was, Robert wanted to marry you right then and there.

He woke you up with kisses on your skin, and the way you groaned and waved him away despite clinging closer to him with your face pressed to his bare chest. He said the simple words, “hey, you wanna get married today?” And it woke you up better than a freshly baked croissant would.

You didn’t ask “what?” or “right now?” Instead, you smiled in that saccharine way, the same smile after he kisses you, the same hazy smile after he showed you how much he loved you. And your hands slid above his heart, the pads of your fingertips drumming softly against his flushed skin as you answered with an undoubted, “yes.”

A week and a half after the courthouse wedding with you in a white dress you had stored in your closet for years but never really found the occasion to wear it at, and with him in his best white button up that he probably only wore once, you two swore your love before a judge. Chase and Mal were the only witnesses, Chase because he’d throw a fit if he wasn’t invited, and he’s an important person in Robert’s life and yours. Malevola because she was the first to answer your very hasty text that said, ‘courthouse at 3pm, wear something nice.’ She did wear something nice, but she thought you were suing someone and that you chose her as your lawyer, she had a briefcase and everything.

The others came in late, and you two were already sealing the deal with a kiss. It wasn’t a grand wedding with thousands of flowers, or a buffet provided by a catering company. But it was magnificent, it was a proof of your love, it’s something you and Robert could call yours. Instead of hundred dollar bouquets and a wedding that would cost an arm and a leg, you two signed the papers in front of the people you care about and right after had a reception at a nearby burger place before coming home with Robert as he carried you inside bridal style like in the movies. The pictures from the whole event turned out nice and Robert is still in the process of placing each picture inside a photo album to surprise you with once he finishes it.

“Robertson?” His thoughts are popped by an intern with a clipboard in hand as she peeks over the doorway, looking anxious and fidgety.

“Yeah?” You and Robert simultaneously turn at the same time.

Robert is elated, like drifting on a cloud as a lopsided smile tugs at the corner of his lips.

Chortling, you pat Sonar on his arm before sidling next to your husband. A title you’re happy and proud to call him as. “Which Robertson? Mister or missus?” Grasping Robert’s arm, you hug him, cheek pressed against his bicep as you grin at the intern before staring at Robert with that same soft smile you only show him.

“Either way it sounds like you two are in trouble.” Sonar teases behind you, plopping himself on your chair and eating the rest of the fries.

“No trouble at all.” She answers with a wobbly smile.

“You’re from HR right?” You ask kindly, trying to ease the poor intern.

“Yea–yes, they asked me to fetch you to sign some papers?”

The conversation goes in the back of Robert’s mind as he gazes at you through his fogged up mind that’s filled with you— your scent, your voice, and how your hands grip sweetly at his arm whilst the ring around your finger twinkles under the light. He really wants to come home with you, and it’s only one pm.

“Robbie?” Looking up at him, you tug at his hand gently, bringing him out of his stupor. “You okay, baby?”

“Y–yeah,” clearing his throat, Robert lets you lead him outside. “Wait, where are we going?”

Giggling, you intertwine your fingers with his as you follow the intern. “You weren’t paying attention, hm?” Brow raised, you nudge him teasingly. “HR said we need to sign some papers since we got married and that I need to sign something too because I legally changed my name.”

“You changed your name?” It seems that he’s still in the haze of the honeymoon you two spent two weeks in bed with the shutters closed and the phones turned off.

You squeeze his hand, laughing lightheartedly as the sound bounces off the corridor. “Yeah, my last name.” You stop abruptly, taking him by his arms. “Shit, did the potion wear off.” Feigning a gasp, you cup his face. “Oh no, the real Robert is waking up from my love potion.”

Robert chuckles, a grin spreading on his handsome face as he holds onto your hands that’s cradling his cheeks. “I don’t think I ever needed it, sweetheart.”

“Fuck yeah, my plan worked.” You answer with a grin, saying it softly as you lean up for a kiss right in the middle of the hallway.

“Oh, I’m a willing participant, Mrs. Robertson.” Uttering above your lips, you two hear a nervous cough from across the other side of the hallway as the intern stands there idly.

“Sorry.” Wincing, a tad embarrassed, you pull away and tug Robert away. “Please don’t tell your bosses about that.”

“I’ve seen worse HR violations in this place.” She mutters under her breath, opening the doors for you and Robert.

—

“So, where’s the wife?” Flambae asks above the clicking glasses and ear drum bursting singing from the karaoke.

“Headache.” Robert hides his giddiness behind the rim of his glass filled with Amber liquid.

Wife, he’ll never get tired of that.

“You’re already giving her a headache after just a month of marriage?” Invisigal adds, snorting over her beer. “I call dibs on her after the divorce.”

“There will be no divorce.” Robert’s brows furrow, shaking his head as he frowns. Just the thought of it squeezes at his heart.

“You know what they say, Robert,” Chase slurs, drink sloshing in his wobbly grip. “Happy wife, happy life. Marriage is easyyy.”

“How would you know?” Mal scoffs, taking a bite of her slider. “You’ve never been married.”

“Who said I was never married?” Chase narrows his reddened eyes at her, whilst the whole table silences from shock. “What? Surprised that someone actually managed to tie me down? It was a night out in Vegas back in—”

“Hello, room for one more?” You appear from behind Chase, materializing in front of Robert as colour suddenly appears to be brighter in his vision.

“Hey, Mrs. Robertson!” The whole table greets you, raising their glasses at you as you smile.

“Thought you couldn’t make it.” Robert’s smile is brighter than the stage lights as his hand extends for you to take. His eyes never leave your own, watching you go around the corner of the table over to him with that same sweetened smile.

“I toughed it up, I couldn’t miss this.”

“Alright, since you’re late,” Sonar raises his empty beer mug at you. “you’re buying the next round, Mrs. Robertson!”

Sighing, you shake your head with a subtle smile. “You guys look like you’ve had enough though.”

There’s a chorus of, “Nos” and shaking of heads. But Robert's attention is only on you as the yellow light of the bar shines just behind your head, blanketing you in a halo of light whilst you smile and banter with the Z-team.

—

“I never thought Chase could out drink me.” You groan, plopping onto the sofa with half lidded eyes and smelling like a bar. “That old man.” Muttering, you lift up your arms for Robert as he stands beside the sofa. “C’mere, Robbie, hug the alcohol out of me.”

“That’s not how it works, honey.” Nose scrunching, he chuckles, picking up your foot and taking off your heels for you gently.

You watch his hands, every movement of his lean and nimble fingers sends you in a tizzy. “Y’know I’m not too drunk.” You insinuate with a wiggle of your brows.

“You went into a stranger’s car when you thought it was mine. The other car was an entirely different make and color.” He replies with his eyes full of endearment, while he takes off the other heel, as gentle as the last one. “And you kissed Beef, you left kiss marks all over his fur.”

Sure enough, Beef walks in, smiling and wiggling his tail happily at you whilst his fur is covered in numerous kiss marks.

“Yeah, but I always do that. He said that he loves us so much and that we should stay home forever with him.” Pouting, your legs wrap around Robert’s waist, hooking around and pulling him in with the heels of your feet until he’s properly standing in between your legs that he has to put his arms on the side of your head so as to not fall atop you. He’s so warm, and he smells like your coconut shampoo as his russet hair dangles above you. “Baby, my baby boy, you need a haircut.” Fingers raking through his tresses, you utter your words in a sing-song tune whilst gazing at him lovingly.

“You gonna cut it for me?” You could see your tipsy self in his eyes that softens for you.

“Unless you want to be bald.” You poke his cheek, earning a gruff scoff from him. “I don’t think you’ll ever forgive me for that because you don’t have the head shape for it.”

“You never know, I could rock it.”

“Yeah, but I love your hair far too much. Where would I hold onto if I shave it all off?” Pouting, your warm hands finds his sides, sliding underneath his shirt as you run your palms all over his lean stomach. “Off, please.”

“Would you forgive me if I said no?” Robert tilts his head, pecking your forehead sweetly.

“Oh, you’re a killjoy.” Huffing, you decide to rest your hands on his sides instead, just feeling his warmth through his shirt. “But you've been awfully happy recently. Like…” you try to find your words through the fog of alcohol. “Like really in a good mood. Very very happy.”

“Am I not always in a good mood?”

“Sometimes you sulk. I’ve seen you wallow at your desk.” You squeeze his sides lovingly. “Now that I think about it, that’s what caught my eye.”

“I charmed you with my sulking, hm?” Humming, Robert perches between your legs, knees digging into the plush seat, resting there when the small of his back started to ache.

“Yeah,” you giggle, chasing his lips as he teases by leaning away from you, earning a deep pout from you. “C’mon, just a kiss, Robbie.”

“You wanna know why I’m in a good mood?” His head tilts, eyes gazing at your lips briefly before flicking to your eyes again.

“Yeah, because whatever it is I want to recreate it so you’re always all smiley and happy. I love it when you smile, Robert. You’ve got a pretty smile.”

“There’s one thing you can do to make me smile more.”

“Tell me.” You tug him by his belt loop, until he’s sitting on your lap, legs spread on your sides as he cups the back of your head, gazing into your eyes. “I’ll do anything for you.”

“You can always marry me again.”

The widest grin spreads across your face. “Done.”

Robert feels his heart skip a beat at your immediate response. His knuckles drags slowly over your cheek, gentle and loving as he hears you hum in content, feeling the rumble in your chest. “You’re the reason why, y’know? Why I’m in a good mood.”

“I figured.” You feel him shift his weight, and you already know what he’s planning before he does it. You don’t stop him though.

“I’ve never…really thought I’d love someone as much as you,” Robert says wholeheartedly, confessing, showing you his heart that beats for you. “more so get married.”

“On a whim, might I add.”

He chuckles. “Yeah, my name suits you well.” Robert makes his move, one second he’s in your lap, the next he has your back on the couch cushions as you look up at him whilst he looms over you with a lopsided smile. “There, better.”

“Much better. And good, because I’m never changing it. It’s mine now. I’m Mrs. Robertson forever and ever!” Your nose nudges at his temple as you feel him smile above your clavicle. Your fingers rake through his hair, while you’re both utterly blissed out.

“I don’t want you to give it back anyway.” Pecking your jaw, he rests his head right there over your heart, inhaling you in and letting your warmth ebb through him. “Just waking up right next to you every morning makes me happy, sweetheart, you don’t really need to do much.”

“But I’ll keep doing stuff that makes you happy though. Forever and ever and ever.” Giggling, giddy from the sweet moment, your legs wrap around his hips, locking him in place. Robert doesn’t seem to want to get out of it anytime soon. “I love you, Mr. Robertson.”

“And I love you too, Mrs. Robertson.”

“Fuckin’ hell, love, that one was extra sour.” Sitting back down, he snatches your soda and takes a gulp as you continue to laugh at his scrunched face. “Don’t buy me another one of those, I could feel my teeth rattlin’.”

“So not even the chocolate balls?” You pop one in your mouth as the burst of sweetness envelopes your mouth.

“I have a couple of chocolate balls ‘ere for you, love.” His pierced brows wiggle whilst you almost choke on the treat. It’s Hobie’s turn to laugh at you, handing the drink over to you as he pats your back.

“You asshole!” Coughing, you smack his thigh, garnering another laugh from him.

“What? I do have ‘em ‘ere for you!” The plastic package crinkles in his hand, shaking the unopened treat in your face. “See.”

“You’re so annoying.” You groan, rolling your eyes as he scooches closer to you, now hip to hip, an arm behind you protectively as his hand rests on the ledge beside you.

“You love me.” He teases, chin stabbing right at your shoulder as he grins lopsidedly at you.

“I do but you’re still annoying.” Scrunching your nose, Hobie really wants to kiss the folds on your nose as he chuckles, lips a hair’s width away from your own. The sunset drapes upon the two of you in warm light, adding to his sweetened gaze that you return with the same saccharine look. “How many more hours until our patrol ends?” You ask, tone soft, eyes glancing down at his lips that are lightly dusted with sour candy sugar. If you kiss him now you can bet that you’ll be able to taste the candy on his lips.

“An hour. A whole agonizin’ hour.”

“What do you want to do when we get to your place, hm?” Your finger twirls around a stray curl on his nape as he sighs in content.

“I think you already know, love.”

“Nope, I don’t. I need you to tell me in great detail, Hobie.”

A grin spreads across his handsome face as his hand finds your waist, fingers curling around you tenderly. “First I’m goin’ to snog you until—”

“Hey, lovebirds!” Lyla’s hologram suddenly appears in between you, blocking Hobie’s half lidded eyes. “You’re still on the clock, remember?” She says with a lilt as the two of you pull away with an annoyed groan. “We have an anomaly at Earth—”

“Yeah, yeah, Lyla, we see the bloody alert.” Hobie waves her away, her hologram flickering. “We’re on it.”

Rubbing the ache blooming in between your brows, you stand up and stretch, putting your mask on as Hobie calibrates his watch.

“Don’t you two wanna hear what you’re after?” Lyla perches on your shoulder, looking skeptical over her glasses.

“An anomaly that clearly doesn’t belong in that dimension.” You answer flatly, the warmth in your chest sizzling out from the intrusion. “It’s not our first rodeo, Lyla.”

“Wishin’ that it’s our last though.” Hobie mumbles under his breath, sighing loudly as the orange glow of the portal hums. “C’mon, lovie, let’s get this over with.” Pulling his mask on, he gives you an open palm.

You take his hand in yours, and his whole demeanor softens from that alone.

—

The two of you swing from building to building searching for the anomaly. It’s been twenty minutes of blindly looking around for a needle in a haystack in a dimension not so different from your own. Maybe you should’ve listened to Lyla and asked what the hell you’re even hunting.

Whilst swinging around, you can tell that Hobie’s getting frustrated. The easy conversation fizzles out, from asking what you want for dinner to small grunts as a reply after you asked him if he’s doing okay. You don’t blame him, you want to go home and relax in his arms just like how he desperately wants to fall asleep beside you, but alas, the anomaly is a hide and seek champion.

You land on the side of a building as you check your watch, the blinking dot on the map stays still somewhere down the docks. Hobie sidles beside you, crawling over to you as he takes a peek at your watch.

“That him?” He asks, forehead resting against your bicep. You could practically feel his exhaustion through his suit.

“Yeah,” the same fatigue rolls in your taut muscles, a hand gliding along the top of his mask, fingertips rolling around and in between the spikes. “Fuck, I’d give anything for our bed right now.”

“We better hurry up then, love.” Pecking you through your mask, Hobie inhales deeply before swinging away.

Blowing a raspberry, you unstick yourself from the building, free falling as the wind blows around you. Before you hit the ground, you’re swinging away and following right behind Hobie.

The dimension is awfully familiar to Hobie’s, same streets, same houses and even the same corner shop you two go to whenever you have a hankering for snacks in the middle of the night. It’s all the same, except the fact that people here speak some sort of alien language, and their written language is in hieroglyphics like writing. Plus the fact that the people here still dress like they’re in the 50’s, 1850’s that is. It’s weird but definitely not the weirdest dimension you came across.

You almost collide into Hobie as he hangs onto his web, staying still and just hanging there.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Your hand kneads at the space between his shoulder blades like always. “Do you see the anomaly?”

“No,” there’s something laced in his tone.

It’s an unusual reaction from him, one that you’ve only seen a few times. So you follow his gaze, only to garner the same reaction from you.

There, on a floating houseboat like his own, are a couple. The sight is sweet, the man is on one knee, proposing to the love of his life as she sobs on her hands, whilst speaking in the language you can’t understand.

“Lyla, translate.” You probably don’t need to know what they’re talking about when it's clear as day, when it’s clear who those two people are— it's you and Hobie, dressed in the dimension’s fashion, and looking so in love with each other.

“On it.”

Your ear piece cackles to life, glitching before turning into the English you understand. The first thing you two hear is your name from this universe’s Hobie, said in that sickly saccharine timbre you've heard your Hobie whisper in your ear.

“Will you make me the happiest man in the world and be my wife?” This Hobie asks, accent different, intonation different, but his voice is the same as your Hobie, with the same sweetened tone whenever he asks you to stay for breakfast, whenever he calls your name in the society. It’s him and you, but different, more in love, in a different phase of their lives. When you two have only been together casually, a few months, a few blissful months. It’s going great, he’s amazing, and you’re falling for him hard, probably already are but as you stare at the side of his mask, the way his breath hitches in his throat, the scene before him doesn’t seem to give him the same warm feeling in his chest as you do— it wakes him up.

“Anomaly on your right!” Lyla screams in your ear piece. That’s the last thing you hear before a hurling boulder hits you dead on.

—

There are dust and debris all over the docks. Large rocks have found their way into the water, slowly sinking down into the muddy depths. Smoke belches from somewhere, the air acrid in your lungs as you try to take a deep breath only to cough harshly. Ears ringing, body aching, your head hurts, pain blooming right on your temple as you touch the spot. Finding blood right on your fingertips as you bring your hand to see.

“Oh, fuck…Hobie…” coughing, rolling around on the cracked docks, you feel the splintered wood against your back as you face the gloomy sky. “Hobie!”

The shrill ringing still blocks your hearing, as you wince and groan on the ground. There’s a faint pressure on your shoulder, a familiar hand, a familiar squeeze.

You turn to face the source, and you see Hobie, looking down at you with concern. He’s saying something, mouth opening and closing but you can’t hear anything he’s saying.

His head turns towards his right, yelling something before the sound of a muffled thump against the shattered dock echoes in your muffled ears.

Your own face appears in your vision, gasping as she says something to Hobie, no, this isn’t your Hobie, it’s her Hobie, the one that gave her the sparkling ring on her finger.

“Congratulations…” you mumble, tongue dragging along your dry lips.

“Love!” Hobie, your Hobie in his familiar accent, in a familiar language and the familiar sound of his boots against the wood, runs towards you.

Your body feels heavy. You’re so sleepy.

“Oi, oi, don’t close your eyes!” He takes off his mask as your hearing slowly returns. Hobie’s face is marred by his terrified expression, hands grasping onto you as he yells into his watch. “Where the fuck are they, Lyla?!”

“Oh, hey, Hobie…” you reach for him, but your arm doesn’t move. You’re so tired, so so tired.

“Stay with me, lovie, yeah? We have to go home.” Your eyes fight to stay open just as the orange glow from the portals open beside you. “No, no, wake up!” His voice fades away as you fall asleep.

—

You wake to the sound of beeping and a hand wrapped around your own. Cracking an eye open, you find everything too bright, everything is too loud, and you could feel every pain and ache in your body.

Wincing, the hand around your own immediately moves. Hobie enters your line of sight, a face contorted into worry, still wearing the same suit with various battle damages. Shit, the fight.

“H—Hobie—”

“Shh, it’s alright, don’t talk.” His voice is almost as hoarse as yours. He looks as if he hasn’t slept in days. “You’re okay, you’re at the society’s hospital.”

“What—” you smack your dry lips together as he leaves your sight for a moment. The sounds of water rushing in your ears is loud whilst you wince, coughing out from the dryness of your throat. “Hobie, where are you?”

“‘m ‘ere, ‘m ‘ere, don’t worry.” Gently, like a feather upon your skin, he lifts your head up to help you take a drink. “There, slowly, love.”

You gulp down the water, letting it wash away the dryness. Droplets dribble from your chin and Hobie wipes it away with his hand.

You finish the whole glass as he smiles tiredly at you. “Better?”

“Much.” You manage a smile before a wave of pain from your temple beats at your skull. “F–fuck.”

“I’ll call doctor spider—” your weak hold around his wrist stops him. “Love, you need to be seen by him.”

“I’m okay, just— stay for a bit, just us.” You lick at your lips as you watch him weigh both options inside his head.

Hobie notices you squinting, he always notices every minute detail about you, anything that he could help with in making you feel better or just to make you smile.

“Can I dim the lights?” He asks lowly, almost a whisper as his thumb gently brushes around your IV line.

You nod and he reluctantly pulls away. Hobie goes to the far wall and dims the light until he could see your eyes relax. He immediately goes back to your side, already reaching for your hand to hold.

“Hi.” You tearfully look up at him with a smile.

“Hi, love.” He hides his own tears with a well timed sniff.

“Do I look okay?” Your hand hovers above your head, where you feel a bandage wrapped around it.

“You look bloody fit as always.”

“You’re a charmer.” You squeeze his hand as tight as you could. “A lying charmer.”

“Still a charmer.” Hobie sits down, scooches his seat closer to the edge of the bed, too afraid to sit beside you on the bed as if his added presence will exacerbate your injuries. “Five minutes and I’ll call the doc in.”

“Okay, have you eaten yet?”

“Love, you’re the one with all these wires on you.”

“You know I worry when you skip meals whenever you’re too worried or busy.” Your voice is small, and Hobie wonders if he’ll ever hear your real voice again once you recover.

“Gwen dropped off some food yesterday, and a sandwich today. I took care of myself, don’t worry.”

“He says while he’s still in his suit. I can see my blood on you, Hobie.”

He chuckles, looking down at himself before gazing at you again as if he’s afraid that if he leaves his gaze from you for too long you’d be unconscious again. That you’d fade away from his sight.

“Yeah, well, I have my limits. I don’t look too bad, right?”

“No, still handsome.” Your palm grazes his cheek, still too weak to fully raise your hand.

“I smell, don’t I?” The corner of his lips tug into a small smile.

“No, not in the slightest.” You shake your head with a snort.

“Good, because Miles came in ‘ere and sprayed me down with his cologne.”

You’d laugh harder if you don’t feel the pain pound right at your head. “I hope it’s not the one he wears.”

Hobie chuckles, bringing your hand to his lips for a heavy kiss. For a beat, he just sits there with your hand on his lips as you feel the quiver of his lips against your skin.

He opens his eyes and it’s filled with unshed tears. “You scared me there, love.” His tone breaks at the edges, he clears his throat, sniffing and smelling the antiseptic on your skin. “I shouldn’t— I shouldn’t have froze.”

“It’s okay, I’m okay, please,” you squeeze at his hand, index brushing along the apple of his cheek. “Please don’t blame yourself. I froze too, Hobie.”

Shaking his head, your hand upon his forehead, he sniffs and kisses your hand again before bringing it to his cheek. “We both fucked up.”

“Yeah, we both did.” You chuckle, feeling your enhanced healing do the work. “I’m feeling better already, so please don’t blame yourself.”

“Can’t help it, love.”

“I know,” you would be doing the same if the positions were reversed. “What…” you clear your throat and he turns to ready another cup of water for you before you gesture for him to sit back down. “What happened to the couple? The ones who were proposing on the dock?”

He smiles, an easier one this time as his head tilts, hand still clasped in his. “You mean us?”

You bite your cut lip to stifle a giggle. “Yeah, a better dressed version of us.”

“They’re good, they helped you actually. They held pressure on your wound while I was beatin’ the shit out of dapper Kraven.”

“The anomaly was Kraven? No wonder why he was so quiet.” You try to piece together all the snippets you saw while you were in and out of consciousness.

“Not jus’ him,” your brow furrows. “There was a Sandman too.”

“What?” Your eyes widen, immediately concerned for him. “T–two? Hobie.”

“‘m good, love. I got them both.”

You scoff, more akin to a shocked laugh. “Shit, I want to see the footage of that.”

“You’ll be jumpin’ my bones in the middle of watchin’ it then.”

“That’s why I want to see it.” You regain enough strength to take his hand instead and press a kiss right on his broken knuckles. “I’m sorry for leaving you all alone to fight them by yourself.”

Hobie shakes his head, leaning closer to you now, almost on the bed as he smiles at you. “None of that.”

“I should’ve seen that boulder coming from a mile away but I got distracted.” You chortle, pulling him closer to you, wordlessly telling him to get on the bed beside you.

He understands as he lays himself gently beside you, avoiding all the wires attached to your body. The hospital bed is too small, but you two make it work with his hand on your other side to prevent you from falling whilst you grip at his vest to keep him from falling.

“It’s a canon event.”

“No, it’s not.” Your laugh echoes around the hospital room, a balm to his soul.

“It’s not.” Hobie chortles back, an arm thrown over your middle, so careful and mindful of his weight on you. “The love birds distracted us.”

“An understatement.”

“Do you…” his eyes wander over to the wall as his fingers run along the length of the blanket on your side. “do you think we’ll get to that point someday?”

“Yes,” you answer without uncertainty. “Yeah, I definitely see us getting to that point.”

“With a ring and everythin’?” Turning his gaze at you, his eyes shine, as you feel his heartbeat against your side. “If you want.”

“With a ring and everything.” You smile back, resting your forehead against his own. “I thought you froze because you didn’t want that for us.”

“No, I froze because…” once he meets with your eyes his nerves ease. “‘cause I saw us, and I thought, ‘shit, do we really look at each other like that all the time?’ because it was too sweet, lovie, and it made me realize that they could be us someday. Then I thought you might not want it.”

You kiss the tip of his nose, tangling your leg around his leg and pulling him close. “I want it too, seeing them made me realize that it was an option for us. And they looked so in love it was sickening.”

You both laugh into each other’s lips.

“Someday, yeah?”

“Someday.”

<< Chapter 6 Chapter 8 >>

Mum’s alive.

Those words skip in Billie’s mind like those old vinyl records her dad kept in his room, scratching with each iteration. The only noise that breaks through the constant loop of revelation is the crinkling of the old photo in her hand, with the smiling faces of you and Hobie hanging over her. Her eyes drift over to the printed image of you– frozen in time, forever young on paper. You’re grinning ear to ear as you hold up a black t-shirt, one with an old graphic design for the band at the time– a red web inked across the chest with the band name trapped on it in white. Billie’s fingers fidget with the worn photo as she glances to the floor, all the content from her trunk still crumpled around her. Scattered photos and papers, strewn pens and pencils, haphazardly-tossed shirts and pants– Billie winces at the sight of them on the clean hardwood floor. A nagging image of Ramona comes to mind: dirt caked on her cheeks, clothes smudged with grime, dust clouded around her as she aired the cabin out.

With a reluctant sigh Billie pushes herself up and starts to clean, starting with the tin box next to her.

The photo of you slides out of her fingers and flutters back into the box, your beaming face slipping into dark shadows. Billie looks away to the other photos on the floor and pushes them into a pile, ignoring the imaginary looming pressure from your printed presence before dropping the photos on top of you.

Tingles crawl over Billie’s skin, her hands restlessly fidgeting across the floor– straightening crumpled papers, tossing pens and pencils into her trunk, piling her clothes to the side. Her big toe twitches back and forth under her electric blue sock. Her fingers wriggle every time an item drops from her grasp. Her head jerks in micro-headbangs as her face pinches in a troubled frown.

Mum’s alive. She’s actually alive.

Billie’s mind rings in her head in bombarding echos like cymbals, drowning out any background noises around the cabin. Her body moves on autopilot– almost robotic and erratic– while she tosses her belongings in her trunk. The urge to run and thrash around thrums in her leg muscles, but the image of Ramona cleaning the cabin still lingers in the back of Billie’s head. She tucks her legs further in to stave away the urge, but her fingers and toes still twitch in anticipation. Butterflies swarm in Billie’s stomach, and a burning tightness creeps up the back of her throat. The cymbals in Billie’s head clash harder in her eardrums, loud and unrelenting, while her fingers tremble against a cotton shirt.

Mum’s alive. She’s really alive. And I might actually see her.

Wrinkles crease along the fabric as Billie struggles to fold her shirt, attempting to fold it the way Ramona did before. Her brows furrow when the shirt slips from its fold, her nose crinkles when the sides droop over weirdly, and her mouth curls into a dissatisfied scowl when her fingers accidentally tug at a fold and pull a sleeve out of it. She’s not gonna make her clothes look like those fancy department store’s– she doesn’t know how Ramona was able to– but she needs something to occupy her fingers. The cymbals gradually cease their clangor as she tosses her sorry attempt of a folded shirt into her trunk, but the thoughts still hum in the background.

Mum’s alive. She wasn’t dead this whole time. And she has another daughter– I have a sister! A sister around my age? Maybe younger? Is Mon-Mon around my age?

Billie’s fingers clumsily fly through folding her trousers, catching themselves into the ripped sections and snapping some frayed denim.

Mon-Mon looks like me, obviously, so she has to be Dad’s daughter too, right? I mean, Dad would tell me if I have a sister, right? But why didn’t he? Why wouldn’t Dad tell me about Mon-Mon? Why wouldn’t he talk to me about Mum? Why did they split us up?

The thrumming itch to move in her stalls from the thought. Billie’s fingers freeze mid-fold, the denim rough against her skin. Her stomach twists the longer those thoughts buzz like low static.

What actually happened between Dad and Mum?

A click rings through the silence surrounding Billie, and she looks up to the door as Ramona freezes under the doorway. Her hand clenches the leather handle of her bass case, the metal hinges softly rattling, the case barely swaying against her leg. Ramona’s eyes, shadowed underneath by a hint of purplish-black, waver under Billie’s stormy scrutiny. The tension looms heavy within the cabin, so thick that Billie can cut through it with her bow string. The faint chirping and rustling leaves outside barely register in Billie’s ears, even as Ramona walks inside and closes the screen door behind her. The cymbals clash back in Billie’s head, all the spiraling questions and thoughts festering in her chest and clawing up to her throat, but the walls behind Ramona’s eyes render them useless on Billie’s tongue. The urge to move intensifies in Billie, but at the same time her body is anchored to the hardwood under Ramona’s gaze.

Her eyes mirror Billie’s, they mirror her dad’s– their dad’s.

Billie swallows the lump in the back of her throat as Ramona finally averts her eyes, but the uncomfortable festering still lingers for the pink girl.

The moment Ramona saw that photo of you– the you before her, captured in the past she seemingly knew nothing about– Billie saw whatever ember in Ramona’s eyes flicker out. She avoided talking to Billie for the next few days– staying out longer for her bass lessons; eating breakfast before Billie woke up; going to bed earlier before Billie came back from her violin lessons.

Hell, Ramona never even touched her mp3 player after that, so the silence within the cabin was even more stifling. No muffled acoustic playing in the background as Billie’s alarm, no faint synths and snare kicks echoing in the background during break times, no hushed pianos and violins to lull Billie to sleep.

And especially no song from Dad blaring out in the cabin.

Billie gets it– being blindsided isn’t fun at all. She’s still grappling with the bombshell of you being alive. But Ramona? She didn’t even get a single story about Dad from you, no hint of him ever revealed in Ramona’s life. The only way he was ever involved in her life was through his music, but you never even mentioned that you knew the band, let alone were involved with them from the beginning. Wouldn’t someone normally brag about that? Or at least mention that part of their life to their daughter? And not only did Ramona have to find out about Dad being alive, but she had to find out through a stranger who happened to be her sister? Of course Ramona would be scared off and avoid Billie at all costs.

Billie gets it, she really does.

It doesn’t mean she has to like it though.

Billie glances back up at Ramona shuffling back to her side of the cabin, the soft clinking of the metal handles echoing as the bass case sways against Ramona’s leg. Rubber soles drag against the hardwood as Ramona approaches her bed, gingerly dropping the case down next to her trunk. She flops onto her bed, her long legs hanging off the edge. Dark coils splay over from behind her ponytail, cascading over her back and onto starched white sheets. The curtains from a window flutter from the gentle summer breeze, and the fading sunlight creeps through the sheer fabric and dapples over the girl amidst looming shadows, as if trying to protect her with its fleeting presence.

It’s like a dramatic painting Billie would see in those big art books Auntie Yuri keeps.

Billie’s face pinches up into a grimace, her eyes narrowing and her mouth curling into a small pout. Prickles fester in her chest as she stares at her melodramatic double– sister? Twin? – before she tosses her poorly-folded jeans onto the floor. The punk girl pushes herself up with a grunt, almost toppling back down from the sudden rush of blood through her leg. Wincing from the pins and needles assaulting her leg, she stumbles towards Ramona, one foot slogging with all of Billie’s weight while her other foot drags behind.

Billie can’t let this go on– if not for Ramona’s spiraling mental state, then for Billie’s own sanity.

Heavy combat boots finally stop in front of the occupied bed. Billie’s shadow looms over the sprawled figure, and it takes everything within Billie not to yank Ramona out of bed.

“Oi.”

Ramona ignores her, burying her face into her pillow. Another sharp prick stabs into Billie’s chest as she nudges Ramona’s leg.

“Oi, Mon-Mon.”

Ramona weakly kicks Billie’s hand off before she curls up on her bed, draping her duvet and pillow over her like a makeshift shield.

The pins and needles in Billie’s leg swarms up to her chest, the prickling growing unbearable to the punk girl. With gritted teeth and hardened eyes, Billie slaps her hand on the fleshy part of Ramona’s rear. A startled scream muffles under the duvet before Ramona scrambles out of her cocoon. Angry tears well up in Ramona’s eyes as she glares at Billie, a hue of red creeping up her skin.

“What was that for?!”

Hot waves of pain emit from Billie’s hand. Frustration claws up her throat, poisoning her tongue with an acrid taste as she struggles not to yell. “I am done with ya ignorin’ me! We are talkin’, ‘n we are talkin’ right now–!”

A harsh scoff slips through Ramona’s lips as she slips out of her bed away from Billie, covering her butt from future assaults. “There’s nothing to talk about–”

“Like hell there is!” Billie chases after Ramona as she storms around the cabin. “Ya t’ink avoidin’ me’s gonna fix any of this?! Jus’ ‘cuz ya don’t wanna talk ‘bout it don’t mean ‘s gon’ go away!”

Ramona storms towards the shared wardrobe cabinet, flinging the doors open until they slam against the sides. She angrily snatches a basket full of crumpled clothes and stomps away before Billie can grab her.

“There is nothing to talk about, Billie–”

“Really? ‘Cuz findin’ out we have t’ same parents seems like somethin’ t’ talk ‘bout–!”

Billie rushes in front of the exit before Ramona could, holding her arms out to block the way. An exasperated groan rumbles through Ramona’s chest as she turns her back from Billie, but the punk girl is not having it. “Are ya really gon’ blank me on this?!”

A tempest brews within the confines of the cabin as the two girls continue their cat-and-mouse game. Loud stomps reverberate throughout wooden walls. Angry groans creak from the floorboards. The windows rattle, stained glass threatening to pop off their panels.

“Damn it, Mon-Mon, talk t’ me!” Billie’s voice thunders against the walls. “Ain’t this a good thing–?”

Ramona slams the basket down, the clothes spilling onto the floor. “In what world would this be a good thing?! How is finding out that your parents lied to you a good thing?!”

Hurt flickers in the punk girl’s eyes as she stumbles back, but she quickly stands her ground again, “I dunno, but there had t’ be a reason–!”

“What reason would they have, then?” Ramona’s counter strikes through Billie like lightning. Frustration storms behind russet eyes, tears welling up before Ramona angrily wipes them off. “Why would they split us up and not tell us about each other?”

The pins and needles worsen in Billie’s chest, but she swallows the bile in her throat as she chases after Ramona again, accidentally kicking the clothes away. “Like I said, I don’t know! But there had t’ be somethin’!” Static crackles in the air as Billie grabs Ramona’s arm and yanks her back. “Stop try’na walk away from me–!”

“Stop touching me!”

Ramona yanks her arm out of Billie’s hand just as hard, fire crackling behind her glistening eyes. A sharp hiccup wracks her body, and stray tears threaten to roll down her cheeks.

“You don’t get it! My mom never lies to me!”

The prickles in Billie’s chest surges up her throat as she stares at her trembling double, her tongue heavy like lead in water.

“My mom never lies to me!” Denial clings to Ramona’s voice, straining it into a hoarse cry. “She doesn’t keep secrets from me! Why would she keep this from me?!”

Another sharp hiccup wracks her body again as more tears bead up along her lashline, threatening to spill over. She trembles under the pressure, the scrutiny, from her stranger of a sister– the one who was raised by a father she never met.

“She never told me anything about Dad,” Ramona’s voice trembles with each hitch of breath. “Not about him being in a band, not about making his merch, nothing!”

Betrayal and hurt flashes in her eyes as the tears finally roll down her cheeks. “It’s not fair! Why do you know something about Mom that I don’t? Why do you get to keep pictures of her and Dad together and I don’t? Why do you get to know about Mom but I don’t know anything about Dad?”

Sharp sobs wrack her body as tears continue to fall, dripping onto the hardwood floor. “Why am I being left out?”

Billie stands frozen as the sounds of sniffles echo within the cabin, the mirror image of her trembling and struggling to breathe with each sob. A dull ache lingers in a void in her chest, rolling and thundering like a storm cloud, rendering her speechless. She takes a tentative step towards Ramona, as if her presence would set off another eruption of tears if she takes the wrong step. The back of Billie’s eyes burn, but tears refuse to surface, not when some are already shed in front of her. Each footfall creaks on the hardwood, muffling the shallow hitches of breath, until Billie stands solemnly in front of Ramona again.

The punk girl gingerly grabs onto her sister’s wrist before pulling her into a tight hug.

Ramona stiffens in the sudden embrace, long, lanky arms wrapping around her like a vice. Despite having a similar build, Billie feels more solid, more steady, more reassuring. A scent of citrus and leather wafts into her nostrils, comforting to the point of bringing her to tears again, before she wraps her own arms around her double. Burying her face into Billie’s shoulders, Ramona blinks away more tears as she clings tighter. More sobs bubble up in her chest, and her body trembles as she gives into her warring emotions.

Billie’s never seen anyone cry before. Granted, she knows what being sad looks like– mainly through her dad whenever Uncle James or Auntie Yuri talked about you– but she’s never seen someone actually cry until now. The ache in her chest is suffocating, crushing her lungs and blocking the back of her throat, as she hugs Ramona tighter.

What would make her feel better? What would make her stop crying? Hugs usually make Billie happy, but it’s just making Ramona cry more. The only other thing that Billie can think of is–

Billie’s eyes widen from the brief epiphany before she gently pulls Ramona back. “Do ya want a choc’late orange?”

“...a what?”

—

Ramona doesn’t remember how she got trapped under a tight blanket cocoon.

One moment she’s being manhandled by her long-lost sister into a bear hug, the next she’s sitting on the floor wrapped in Billie’s blanket. All the while, Billie dumps a pillowcase full of colorful snacks Ramona doesn’t recognize. Disbelief flickers in Ramona’s red-rimmed eyes as she watches Billie tuck an edge of a chocolate bar between her teeth before rummaging through the rest of the snacks.

“Dad always gives me sweets whenever I feel bad,” Billie mutters through her teeth. Her fingers rake through the plastic covered treats and mini cardboard boxes, hunting for one that piques her fancy. “He says sugar can kickstart t’ do…do–hm…”

Billie’s face curls into a frustrated scowl as she snatches one of the cardboard boxes, tucking her finger into the top tab. “He always says t’ word really fast, but ’s basically t’ feel-good feeling in yer brain–”

“...dopamine?”

“Yeah, that–”

She easily rips the top off and tilts the small box, letting an orange-foiled ball tumble onto her awaiting palm. The scent of orange wafts towards Ramona as she leans closer, her eyes lingering on the reflective tangerine-shaded glint. Little dimples cover the ball, and Ramona can already feel the ghosts of them grazing against her fingers, conjuring the image of the actual fruit in her mind.

“Billie, is this the thing you were talking about–?”

SMACK!

Ramona flinches back when Billie slaps her palm against the ball, crinkling the foiled barrier and flattening the inside before unwrapping it.

“It tastes t’ best when ya break it in pieces–”

“Why’d you have to be so violent with it though–?”

“ ’s fun,” the punk girl shrugs as she pulls a small piece out, revealing an orange wedge-like shape. “Plus they’re hard t’ break otherwise.”

Billie lets the chocolate bar drop from her mouth before popping the wedge in, and elation lights up in her eyes. She bounces in place happily, a goofy grin curling up her lips, before she presents the– admittedly perfectly sectioned– pieces of chocolate.

Hesitation flickers on Ramona’s face, her brows furrowing and her mouth curling into a slight frown. Her hand tentatively slips through the blanket barrier around her before grabbing the smallest sliver she can find. The aroma of orange drifts towards Ramona again, the chocolate slowly melting under her touch, the intricate orange-like details running away from the heat of her fingertips. She slowly slips the sliver into her mouth, her tongue lapping up the remnants of chocolate off her fingers.

Milk chocolate coats her tastebuds, melting on her tongue as the taste of orange suddenly floods her senses. The scent lingers the back of her nose while the flavor meshes with the chocolate, a confusing clash within her mouth. The citrus is biting while the chocolate is cloying, almost fighting for dominance in an awkward dance.

Ramona can’t help but let a grimace flicker on her face.

“...it tastes weird.”

“Oi–!”

Billie stares at her double with a flabbergasted stare, as if her very existence was just insulted. “I gave ya t’ best tastin’ flavor too!”

“It still tastes weird. The orange flavor is trying to overpower the chocolate–”

“No it doesn’t! It just brings out a different side of it!” Billie’s cheeks puff out as her lips jut into a frustrated pout. “L-like, it brings out different notes or something–”

Billie’s mind races in a fluster, the sudden urge to defend her favorite sweet charging her sugar-coated tongue. Brief moments of her dad and the band flash in her mind, of how Uncle James would talk about things like “flavor profiles” or “food pairings” with different alcohols and whatnot– but oh god, she for the life of her can’t remember how he said it. 

“It’s like…like a mature flavor! Like the kind adults like!”

Ramona’s face curls up into a disbelieving frown, coupled with a dissatisfied groan. “I don’t think I wanna be an adult if that’s something they’re supposed to like–”

“That ain’t what I meant–!”

A loud groan rips through Billie’s throat as she drops her face into her palms, frustration festering in the punk girl’s chest. Even with her face obscured, Ramona can see Billie sulking behind her hands.

“This is Dad’s favorite sweet too…”

Ramona’s frown drops. A heavy pressure looms over her shoulders from the mention of their dad, the image of him in her head now clearer and more daunting than before. What was once a blurry figure with the same eyes as her, a dark shadow lurking in the corner of her mind, suddenly morphs into that man in the picture. Long thick locs, dapples of silver on his skin, a cat-like grin similar to Billie’s– his lack of presence before now prowls closer to the forefront, demanding to be seen, refusing to be ignored.

But somehow with a weird orange-shaped chocolate, with the bitter flavor of white pith and sugary chocolate still lingering on Ramona’s tongue, manages to keep his punkified existence at bay, his demeanor more…Billie-like as he backs away from her mind.

Ramona really doesn’t know how to feel about that now.

She glances at the crinkled orange foil, and another scene comes to mind– a younger girl who looked like her sitting on the lap of the younger Hobie in Billie’s photo. The little girl giggles with delight when the young punk man smacks the chocolate orange with his hand, easily unraveling the pre-sectioned pieces in front of her. A warm smile curls on the fatherly stranger’s lips while the little girl shoves a chocolate wedge in her mouth.

Would Ramona have been like that if she grew up with Hobie Brown?

Her stomach drops from that lapse in her mind, the scene cutting like an old film in a movie theater. Guilt bubbles up Ramona’s throat as an image of you flickers in place– of a younger Ramona sitting on your lap, with you quietly humming and rocking her to sleep. A ghost of chocolate and cardamom lingers in the back of Ramona’s nose, enveloping her into a bittersweet and forgiving embrace. However that reprieve is short-lived, with taunting whispers worming into Ramona’s ears, tugging her back into the reality before her.

She swallows the acrid lump in her throat.

“You really do love your dad.”

For once Billie stays still, the tweeting birds and rustling leaves outside their cabin doing little to offset the charge in her presence. She peeks through the spaces between her fingers, the same russet eyes reflecting back to Ramona.

“...he’s yer dad too.”

Doubt still plagues Ramona’s mind, but the undeniable proof in front of her waves the hushed taunts away from the forefront. Even with wild dark tresses and swatches of denim and plaid on Billie, Ramona can’t deny how they’re like mirror images of each other, how both of them bear resemblance to the man whose music echoed in Ramona’s life in the background.

“...then why didn’t he want me with him?”

The world outside wooden walls muffle in Ramona’s ears, the silence between them growing too heavy to bear before Billie responds with a shrug.

“...probably t’ same reason as Mum with me.”

The bitter lump claws its way back up Ramona’s throat, lodging itself back with a vengeance. Billie’s blanket weighs Ramona down on the ground, trapping her in a suffocating chokehold, while she’s under her long-lost sister’s scrutiny.

“...Mom wouldn’t do that.”

“Neither would Dad.”

The familiar playful grin is nowhere on Billie’s face. The same earthy brown eyes Ramona shares is shrouded with an unfamiliar shadow, dimming the usual glint in Billie’s eyes. A bittersweet smile curls on the punk girl’s lips before she averts her eyes from Ramona.

“ ‘m sure Dad would've loved ya t’ same if ya stayed with us.” Billie shifts onto the hardwood floor until she’s kneeling, her hands trembling as they start to shovel the rest of the candy and snacks back into the pillow case. “Uncle Ned, Uncle James, ‘n Auntie Yuri too. Probably would’ve had both of us travel ‘round with ‘em in Uncle James’s van, havin’ us eatin’ jaffa cakes ‘n monster munches ‘til we’re sick of it, all ‘til we get to the next new city for ‘em t’ perform.”

Her voice wavers with each scoop of treats retreating into the cotton sack, her smile trembling while her eyes refuse to look back up. “Dad would’ve had us watch backstage, callin’ it our personal front row seats while they take over t’ stage…”

A sniffle breaks the fragile silence, but Billie continues to clean, her wild coils shielding her face from Ramona’s eyes.

“...d’ya t’ink Mum would’ve done t’ same? Keep both of us if she could?”

The thought of you rocking Ramona to sleep creeps back up in her mind, this time the background slowly piecing itself together– the small studio apartment filled with old nicknacks and framed sketches, with patched up quilts and numerous photo albums, an ever-evolving time capsule just for you and her. The scent of chocolate and cardamom lingers back, calming the whirling anxiety in Ramona’s chest. Even as a new little girl flickers into her memories, crawling into your lap next to the younger Ramona, a bittersweet warmth creeps up in Ramona’s chest.

“...Mom definitely would’ve.”

Billie freezes mid-tying the end of the pillowcase. Her curls slowly part as she lifts her head, her eyes clouded with wary hope.

“Yeah?”

The lump in Ramona’s throat shrinks down, and she manages to swallow it down with a trembling smile of her own.

“Yeah.”

Billie’s eyes still waver, but a reassured smile curls up on her lips as she crawls away and tosses the pillowcase into her open trunk. A sigh of relief slips through Ramona’s lips despite herself, and she glances back at the reflective orange foil on the floor, the misshapen chocolate wedges beckoning her back with its citrus scent. With an uncertain frown, she reaches for another piece. Her eyes linger on the detailed etchings of the chocolate, the orange-like stamping still a visual marvel to the girl, before she pops it in her mouth again. And like before, her face contorts into a harsh grimace.

“...yeah, it still tastes weird.”

“Don’t eat it then!”

—

Billie can’t sleep.

Lying in her bed, shrouded in darkness and dappled moonlight through her window, Billie stares up at the ceiling with a solemn frown marring her face. Storm clouds whirl in her head, thundering and weighing her down in a muggy haze. The only thing keeping her grounded is the feeling of silicone earbuds tucked in her ears and the sound of a familiar guitar solo echoing into her head. Billie gently squeezes her hand around Ramona’s mp3 player, the plastic tabs on it a reassuring pressure for her, while she glances across the cabin towards Ramona’s bed.

A sheen of green glints under the moonlight as Ramona soundly sleeps, her bonnet reflecting the silvery light Billie’s way. Ramona’s facing away from Billie, like she usually does when she’s asleep, but after these past few nights it still feels like a wall. But Ramona giving Billie her mp3 player before heading to bed is a step to the right direction, right?

A guitar riff quietly croons in Billie’s ears, that familiar string improvisation beckoning her back to the music. As her eyes drift back to the ceiling, her body slowly sinks into the creaking mattress, starched linen and soft cotton brushing against her skin. The riff gently vibrates through her bones, melting away the tension in her body. Billie flutters her eyes shut with a deep sigh, and the music conjures up another scene in her mind– a tall, lanky figure lies next to her, strumming his web-lined guitar, losing himself to the music. Moonlight brightens into a stark-white spotlight over the figure, silver metal glinting on his face and dread cuffs. Long, calloused fingers dance across the fret in a frenzied grace, bending the sounds around him to his will.

Dad is always electrifying when he performs, even through a small speaker.

Billie glances back over to Ramona’s sleeping figure, and the imaginary punk rocker soon follows her sight, sauntering over to Ramona with his trusted guitar in hand. The guitar grows softer in Billie’s ears as the figment of her imagination sits on the edge of Ramona’s bed, moonlight chasing away the shadows from his face. His piercings glint under the silver beams, but tender warmth behind his eyes shines the brightest as he gazes down at Ramona. He sets his guitar down beside him when the strings fade away. His ring-covered fingers tentatively reach towards the slumbering Ramona, but they flinch away when she curls into a ball with a soft snort.

For once, her dad– even as a figment of Billie’s imagination– looks at a loss.

A dull ache creeps up in Billie’s chest at the sight. Her thoughts start to scramble and clash against the music in her ears now, muddling the transition with more questions.

What happened between Mum and Dad? Why would they split up? Why would they split us up? Does Uncle Ned know? Uncle James? Auntie Yuri? Why didn’t they say anything? Do they even know why? Did Dad tell them not to? Would it be too hard to raise both of us together? Would Dad’ve raised us both if he could? Would Mum? Do they still love each other? Does Dad still love Ramona?

The dull ache in Billie’s chest sharpens into a festering prickle.

Does Mum still love me–?

“Bee, I can’t tell if you’re recording–”

“Shit–”

A soft laugh silences the thoughts in Billie’s head, and a new figure settles beside Billie. The punk girl keeps her eyes on Ramona and her imaginary dad, the new presence near her too fragile for her to turn to. Her dad’s muffled groan vibrates in her ears in a nostalgic embrace, but the unknown woman’s voice tugs at Billie’s heart even more.

“How come you’re recording by yourself anyway?” the new voice chimes in Billie’s ears with a mirthful lilt. “I thought you were gonna head to James’s place–”

“Lost t’ key t’ his flat, Cherry,” her dad’s voice grunts back, “ ‘n t’ bloody knobhead wouldn’t answer t’ door. His bloody van’s parked out front, so I know he’s home–”

“Then maybe you could’ve gone later–”

“I don’t wanna–”

“Why not?” The voice in Billie’s ears envelopes her in a comforting warmth. “You can have James work on the mixer while you’re in the booth–”

“I wanna do this m’self,” Billie can hear the petulant pout from her dad’s voice, a rare break from his usual nonchalance. “James’ll jus’ fuck around too much–”

“You know he wouldn’t, Honeybee. Not when it comes to the girls.”

Billie’s eyes glisten as the new figure drapes her arm over Billie’s stomach, gingerly pulling her into an embrace. A ghost of a kiss presses the crown of Billie’s head– she swears she could feel it– while the voice continues to lull her into a relaxed state.

“See?” A strained huff slips through in the voice. “At least one of them agrees with me. Damn, I think Billie was the one who kicked hard–”

“Oi, no, Billie Jean! Be nice t’ yer mummy!”

Soft shuffling echoes in Billie’s ears as she watches her imaginary dad in front of her turn his eyes to her. His usual cat-like smile softens as he stares at her before he pushes himself up from Ramona’s bed. His long, languid strides back sets Billie’s heart thumping, his eyes reminding her of warmed treacle, before he sits on the edge of her bed. He reaches out, but his hand hovers past Billie and to the figure behind her.

“I t’ink Billie wants ya to join in–”

“Hell no, you know I can’t sing–”

“Oh c’mon, Cherry, ya sing t’ ‘em all the time–”

“When we go to bed–”

“Still counts–”

“Bee, I’m not a professional,” the voice chides with another melodic chuckle, “This is more of your lane–”

“But it’ll be more meanin’ful if it came from both of us.”

Billie’s heart twinges, her eyes starting to glisten. She pulls the mp3 player up to her face, only to see a random numbered file name. Was this supposed to be in there? Was this just some mistake mixed into the numerous songs on this player? Did Ramona skip this file because she didn’t know what it was? Is Billie even supposed to listen to this?

“C’mon, Cherry, sing that pretty song–”

“What, no!”

“Please? F’me? For mac ‘n cheese–”

“Don’t use the girls against me! They’re not even here yet– Hobart Brown, don’t you dare–!”

A startled shriek makes Billie flinch, but she soon relaxes at the chimes of laughter from both parents. The weight of both imaginary figures disappear from Billie’s sides, only for the two figures to dance in front of her in laughter– a younger version of her dad hugs the version of you in the old photo, but your stomach sticks out under your shirt like a watermelon. The voice slips through your lips in a giddy laugh while her dad spins you around the room, the dapples of moonlight dancing across the figures like some kind of fairy tale picture. A muffled ‘please’ echoes into Billie’s ears as her dad buries his face into the crook of your neck.

A long silence soon follows, and a sense of dread starts to sink into the pit of Billie’s stomach. The idea of you refusing to sing stings, even if you didn’t have to. What would you have sounded like? Would you only sing in private, with no prying ears from strangers trying to hear you?

Would Billie be a stranger to you–?

Your voice croons into Billie’s ears in a soft melody, your words laced in tender love, chasing away the thoughts muddling her mind. The lyrics stir a sense of nostalgia despite it being Billie’s first time hearing it, the ache in her chest growing bittersweet.

You sing so beautifully to Billie.

A stray tear rolls down the side of her face when she hears her dad’s deep timbre quietly join, an even rarer moment for Billie. Hobie Brown never sings– he only hoots and hollers on stage, only hums around her and the band. He claims his voice would shatter people’s ear drums until their ears bleed, that it’ll condemn the band’s songs like a wretched curse, that it’ll leave everyone deaf if they’re subjected to his singing.

This is a side of Hobie Brown Billie never knew existed.

Billie pauses the audio and rewinds it to the beginning of the song before slipping out of her bed, the figures of you and her dad disappearing. The elastic from Ramona’s borrowed bonnet around her head digs into her skin, but she ignores it as her feet pad across the room towards her sister. Billie’s hand trembles around the mp3 player, her throat tightening with an incoming sob, her eyes glistening even more. When Billie finally reaches the edge of the bed, she hesitantly nudges Ramona.

“Mon-Mon?”

A quiet grunt rumbles from Ramona as she shrugs Billie’s hand off. With a sniffle, Billie nudges her again, more insistent than before.

“Mon-Mon, listen t’ this with me.”

Another disgruntled groan slips through Ramona’s lips as she scoots away from Billie’s offending hand.

“Can’t it wait ‘til tomorrow?”

“No, ya hav’ta listen t’ it now.”

Ramona sluggishly kicks her feet in her bed with a whine before she turns towards the punk girl, her eyes still slightly swollen and glued together. Billie sits on the edge of the bed, earning another whine from her sister as the mattress sinks under her weight, before she tugs an earbud out of her pierced ear.

“Scoot over.”

“Wha– no, there’s no room–”

“Mon-Mon, please?”

The slight break in Billie’s voice briefly rouses Ramona, her eyes barely cracking open, before she closes them again with a relenting sigh. She scoots over to the other side of the bed, and Billie climbs in, leaving little room for them inside the twin bed. Billie gingerly tucks the free earbud into Ramona’s ear before pressing play.

“Slipping through my fingers all the time, I try to capture every minute…”

Your voice whispers in a serenade again through the small speakers. The slight frown on Ramona’s face starts to soften, and her body slowly sinks into the mattress as you beckon her to sleep, as if already familiar with your melody.

Billie ignores the prickling in her chest, focusing on the shift on her sister’s face as Dad quietly joins in.

“Do I really see what’s in her mind? Each time I think I’m close to knowing, she keeps on growing…”

The deep timbre of his voice hums through Billie’s ears, harmonizing with your own hushed one, lulling Billie into a trance-like haze in the cramped space. Ramona’s face relaxes even more from the lullaby-like song until she falls back into slumber, soft snores vibrating from her.

Billie’s eyes soon grow heavy the longer she listens, the beads of tears clinging to her lashes retreating back while your voice beckons her to sleep as well.

“Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture and save it from the funny tricks of time…”

Warmth slowly creeps into Billie’s chest as her consciousness slips from her fingers. Clinging to the last of your words, Billie finally dozes off with a final bead of a tear dripping from her lashes.

“Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning, waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile…”

----

British Phrase of the Chapter:

Blank - blatantly ignore/ refuse to talk to someone

https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/blank#:~:text=the%20hockey%20game.-,2,the%20street%20after%20the%20scandal

---

Song of the Chapter:

You and Bobby waded through knee deep water for days that drenched your shoes and socks and made you two smell like chlorine like after a day out at the public pool, limbs still wobbly from the waves. The area was almost never ending. You two have lost count of the days spent here, it could just be two or maybe three days, or it could be more than that. You slept on lounge chairs whilst he watched over the perimeter with sunken tired eyes. He always lets you sleep a couple more hours than intended like you do for him, a wordless decision that you both adhere to. The food isn’t as scarce, sometimes they appear out of nowhere, placed by the doorway where you’re about to go through, or bottles of almond water resting beside a sunken beach umbrella. You and Bobby don’t starve nor get thirsty. It’s a mystery that you both stopped questioning.

There were twirly colourful slides that led to somewhere and nowhere that are placed here and there, it’s the one place you and Bobby would never dare go into even if you two are being chased by an entity.

The places you walked through had weird architecture like the yellow offices, stairs leading to nowhere or going down into a void, random platforms, half walls in the middle of a pool, pools with wooden decks, and some had waters as green as algae right next to purple waters. It gave you a headache, but Bobby was enthralled by it, admiring the tiled arches and trippy pools that he muttered to himself about wanting to take pictures of it. You wish your phone still worked so he could take snapshots, you wanted to see how he views the place from his perspective.

Compared to the pool rooms, this place is more akin to reality that it’s incredibly odd. Every step has to be careful so that you don’t accidentally step on shattered glass. And the place is awfully cramped and dirty with scattered broken down furniture and trash. It’s a maze here, you’ve been wandering around with Bobby for an hour or two as the flame on his lighter illuminates the way. Your jeans are still damp from the pools, and he still smells like chlorine, your socks feel disgusting as it squishes with every step.

You’ve stumbled a few times, apparently more than enough times that Bobby has resorted to tugging you to his side and holds onto the hem of your jacket to keep you from face planting on the dirty ground. His warmth beside you is a welcome reprieve from the awful place you two are exploring. Bobby is a good alternative to the warm song of the walls, helping keep your mind quiet.

“Where is that fucking yellow wallpaper. I can’t believe I want to see it again.” He mutters to himself, quiet and yet echoing around the hallway. “This place is fucked, it’s like an old pre-school.”

“Every place here is fucked.” You answer, sniffing the still air that smells perpetually like drying paint. “D’you want to retrace our steps and go back to the pool room?”

Tugging you away from the edge of a random desk in the middle of the corridor, Bobby shakes his head. “No, we’ll get there eventually. I’d rather not go through the demonic doggy door. I swear I heard something move in there.”

“Demonic doggy door?” You stifle a chuckle, swallowing your laughter. The tension between you two still weighs heavy, lingering in the middle like a third person.

“Yeah, that’s what it looked like.” Bobby shines his light into a room, scanning the emptiness before moving forward. He does this unconsciously now, already so used to looking over his shoulder with his head on a swivel and eyes alert. This place has that effect on the ones that wander through its halls. “Have you been anywhere else than the yellow wallpaper rooms?”

“There was one time I fell into a really long hallway with flashing red lights.”

You answer him because you want to mend the heaviness between the two of you. Because you want to do better, just like he said, for the team. Kat’s supposed rescue team, what else is there to rescue when her remains could be scattered around? Maybe her other hand could be laying beside the rubble of this place. It’s horrid to think about her like that, but you can’t help but wonder where the rest of her are. Is it with Clark? Did the pirate eat her? Or worse, there must be a worse fate in this place, you saw it when the wall started absorbing you.

What happened to you in that bathroom doesn’t linger in the pit of your stomach, in fact it opens more questions for you rather than horror when it should be horrifying for you. The arms that held you weren’t human, it was from this world that shouldn’t even exist in the first place. Even though the real person based on him is real and unaware of his copy here. You wonder why the backrooms even made a version of him when he was merely a blip in your life, a brief encounter on a random night. Does everyone who has been in the laundromat have a copy down here? If so, do you have a version of you here? But why would there be a mirror of your grandfather here when he has only existed in your memory?

“A long hallway like this?” Bobby gestures around him using the flame. The fuel is bound to run out, you just hope that you get somewhere lit when it does.

“No, it’s much longer like a never ending hospital hallway, I ran for what seemed to be for hours and there were… things running after me.” Your voice echoes as glass crunches underfoot.

“That sounds fucking great.” Sarcasm rolls off his tongue. “Like paradise, how’d you get out?”

“I just ran.”

Bobby flutters his lips, he seems to be far calmer than usual. Maybe because this place feels much more like reality than the other places you’ve been to. Although a dilapidated reality, it feels real, like if you two could just find the exit sign you’ll get out into the chilly night air and hear cars honking outside. Like a couple of urban explorers, not two people trying to survive the pits of mono yellow hell.

Bobby stops abruptly, and you almost stumble into a fallen shelf. “Like that?” He lifts the light into a room, he probably doesn’t need to when the red light emanating from the singular window on the far wall was enough to illuminate.

Through the glass are trees and even buildings, but instead of sunshine or moonlight, there is only blood red. Crimson skies, red clouds and a reddened sun. Bobby’s face is harsher under the red light, taut, pulled at the edges. Terrified.

Goosebumps rise on your arms. “No, not like that, but it was as red as that.”

“Yeah, fuck that.” His hand curls and uncurls into an unsure fist, a subtle tremble in his finger. Tugging you away, he guides you towards a corner, and you two almost fall into a deep chasm if not for you both holding onto each other. “Holy fuck!” The tips of Bobby’s shoes are on the edge of the void.

“Fuck…” holding onto the side, you peek around, only to see thousands of rooms missing a wall that are all stacked on top of each other, like an apartment building was cleaved into two, leaving a giant hole in the middle. “What now?”

“This place is fucked.” Bobby shudders a breath, shaking his head at the chasm.

You really want to feel the hum rumble through your bones again.

Bobby looks to the left, the chasm is as dim as the rest of the place you walked through, and he had to squint just to see a random set of stairs on his left that is rising up to the ceiling and leading up to a door, looking as if it’s held up by nothing.

“There.” He squeezes your jacket sleeve, taking your attention away from the deep end. “There’s a door up on the ceiling.”

“How do we get up there?” If you could just tilt a little bit forward you’ll fall. But with Bobby holding onto you, you’ll take him down with you. You don’t want that, nor desire that.

“There’s some space to walk on,” he points the light on the wall to his left where a sliver of the floor is there to be walked on. “we just need to hug the wall to get to the stairs.” He gulps down, hands suddenly clammy.

“Please don’t tell me that you’re afraid of heights.”

“I never liked skyscrapers.” Craning his neck, he gives you an apologetic look. “One team, right?”

You nod, moving your hand so you could bracelet around his wrist. Holding his hand feels like a betrayal. “I’m right here. I won’t let you fall. Tit for tat, teammate.” The casualness in your tone eases the tightness around his shoulders, albeit not enough.

“Okay.” Taking a sharp breath, Bobby slowly shimmies on the ledge and with his back sliding against the wall. “I shouldn’t have taken Clark’s money.”

“Keep talking, Bobby. And don’t look down.” You follow closely, squeezing his wrist gently to remind him that you’re still with him. “What did Clark say that was so convincing?” The height gives you vertigo, stomach doing flips.

Bobby breathes hard, heaving and keeping his head held high and his lighter lit. “He said it was for research, that he’ll pay us double.” His foot slips, and you drag him back, an arm over his chest, feeling his heart beat rapidly. “Fuck me!” Bobby instinctively took hold of you, fisting the collar of your jacket. “Shit, I almost—”

“Keep going, you’re doing great.” Patting his heart, Bobby trembles and blindly takes hold of your hand, weaving his fingers around your own out of his own fear.

“I’m sorry, is this okay?” His blue eyes are blown out, panicked, panting and grasping for air.

“Yeah, just keep going.” You reassure him with a small smile and a squeeze. “Tell me something else, nothing that’s related to Clark or this place.”

“Okay, uh…” Bobby slowly starts to move after your gentle coaxing. “Back in high school, I got in trouble for smoking behind the bleachers.”

“You were a real rebel, huh?”

“Not really, I just fucking hate algebra.” He chuckles bitterly, swallowing down the bile rising in his throat when he gets to the foot of the stairs. “I want to go home—fuck!” Yelling, he lets out his frustration out into the void, a hand rubbing at his contorted face. Head turning to you, his sad eyes bring a heart wrenching ache to your chest. “I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can, Bobby.” Your hand squeezes his once more despite the burn on your palm painfully aching under the bandages. “Come on, you made it this far. Just take one step at a time.”

“When we get out of here…” his eyes scan your face, maybe trying to find an ounce of fear in your expression, but he finds none. You’re acting braver than you are in front of him, but he doesn’t need to know that or need to see it. “I owe you dinner, or maybe a fucking blunt or two from my own stash.”

You can’t help but chortle, the sound dragged down by the void below. “I’ll take both actually.”

“You’re not scared of heights?” His trembling legs betray him as he stands frozen on the spot.

“No, I’m scared of falling. May I?” With a gentle hand, you grasp at his cheek, palm feeling at his sharp edges as you caress his skin gingerly like how one would calm a puppy. Your fingers run over the shell of his ear, jaw loosening, fingers grasping your own, Bobby’s breath staggers in his throat, maybe from your touch or the height, you may never know. “I won’t let you fall, Bobby.”

“That’s j–just another way of saying you’re scared of heights.” And yet the gentle coaxing works as he finds it in himself to lift his foot up on the first step. “Don’t fucking let me fall, hero.”

“I won’t.” If he does, if he missteps or staggers and free falls below, then you’d jump after him, isn’t that what heroes do? You take the lighter from him and light his way so his other hand is free to grasp onto a step. “Go, I’m right behind you.”

“Okay.” Slowly, he turns back to the hanging steps, taking it one second at a time. “Can you t–talk about something?” His legs shake underneath him but he continues, hand still holding onto yours.

“Like what?” You wait behind him patiently, shining the light as close as you could beside him without burning him.

“Anything, you in high school? Were–fuck my life—” he takes a pause to breathe, looking over his shoulder as you nod at him. “Were you in a club?” Bobby continues bravely, almost on all fours as he climbs up.

You’re forced to crouch behind him when he refuses to let go of your hand. “I was in a sewing club.”

“You fucking nerd.” He chuckles breathlessly, a bead of sweat dribbling on his temple that you could see clearly under the flame.

“Well it was the only club that was available when I took too long to choose.” Smiling despite the situation you’ve found yourself into, his nervous laugh got to you. “And my grandfather always said that it’s good to learn how to sew, to make and mend your own clothes.”

“He sounds like a practical man.” Bobby’s hand is clammy around your own, but you don’t mind when you still hold onto him. He doesn’t mention how willing you are to hold him now when you were averting his touch as much as you could before.

“He is.” Was, is, it doesn’t matter now when you’re stuck in this place. “He was one of those guys who thinks the world will end during their time.”

“Shit, like making a bunker type of doomsday prepper?” You two make it halfway there. And if you could just peek over, the vertigo alone will make you fall down.

“Kind of.” Your smile wavers at the conversation. “He liked to get away and not be cooped up underground.” His sailboat was his bunker, the words get stuck in your throat. “Anyway, we’re almost there, Bobby, keep going.”

Taking a breather, his forehead rests atop his arm and over a step. “Fuck me.” His unsteady palm meets the steady stair and bravely continues on. “W—were you in a clique back then? I could see you with the band nerds.”

You chortle under your breath, arm aching from the prolonged position. “No, I was mostly bouncing around different friend groups. Do I seem like the type to be in a band?”

“Yeah, l–like a xylophone player or a trumpet.” Voice croaking, Bobby inhales and exhales through his mouth.

“Just a few more steps.” Your thumb over the back of his hand kneads tenderly. “I’m flattered but I don’t even know how to play an instrument, any kind for that matter. I always wanted to learn though.”

“I can play the guitar!” He didn’t mean to exclaim but he was so surprised by finally making it to the top step, he had to let it out. His hand presses against the wood of the door, smiling up at it like a madman. “Holy fuck, we made it.”

You grin, for the first time in a long time, you smile widely, a genuine one, a wholehearted smile that when Bobby turns around to face you, he catches it too and a mirrored grin spreads across his handsome face. It’s a lopsided smile, deeply endearing that makes you smile even more, eyes crinkling in the corners, proud of him.

“You did it, Bobby.”

“Yeah, when we get out of here I’m teaching you how to play the guitar.”

“You have to push open the door first, Jimi Hendrix.”

“Now that’s a great fucking compliment.” With a wobbly smile, he pushes the door open, it falls from its hinges and clatters to the ground next to it as the yellow tinted lights shine down upon the two of you. “Fucking lucky.” Bobby’s face is illuminated, giving you a full view of his relieved expression.

He never thought smelling damp carpet and hearing the annoying droning of the lights would bring a smile to his face.

The song in the walls greets you in that familiar dissonance. It slithers up your spine and around your chest, holding you in its warmth like a man dying of thirst who finally found an oasis. It welcomes you back.

He lets go of your hand briefly to climb up, not missing a beat to immediately help you up the ledge with the same hand. His arms take hold of you, a half embrace, patting your back with bone crushing relief.

“You good, Bobby?” You’re in slight shock from the sudden embrace.

Nodding, his body still trembles from the aftershocks of his fear. “We’re never doing that again.”

“No arguments here.” You’re helped up by your feet, and he’s so close to you that you could smell the chlorine on his skin, that you could see your own reflection in his blue eyes like you’re drifting aimlessly on the surface of the water. You give him a faltering smile before moving away from his warmth.

As Bobby shuts the door so you don’t fall in, you freeze in place. It’s not the familiar yellow wallpaper or the hum that makes your limbs still, it’s what’s in front of you.

“Bobby?” His name twists around your tongue.

“Yeah?” You could still hear the smile on his face from his tone. “You hungry? I’m kind of hungry after that—” his shuddered breath rattles your ribcage. “— what the fuck.”

There, right in the middle of the room are telephone poles lined in a sequence, each sinking into the carpet. But it’s not the poles that strike right at your companion’s heart, it’s the posters nailed right on the wood. It’s all placed on each telephone pole, printed in black and white, a xerox copy of the original— his own missing poster.

Bobby takes a tentative step forward, eyes never leaving the poster. The pads of his fingers glide along the paper, tracing the words on it, tracing his own face then Kat’s printed face.

Grief cripples, it’s apparent on his face. But hope keeps you upright, helps you see and feel so much when that hope pops like a balloon and decays like a rotten fruit in your mouth when the bitter end comes, it kills. That’s what you’re giving him, false hope. It’s a noose that is slowly tightening around your neck. Hope could kill, it just delays the inevitable. You’re delaying the inevitable in hopes of Bobby getting out of here before the truth comes out. You don’t even need to get out with him, you could stay trapped here or die trying. You just want him to survive, for you to actually make all that fighting worth something. An equivalent exchange.

You stare at the posters, lips quivering when your eyes glances at her picture, then over to his photo, they’re both smiling, despite where their picture is printed on. You almost crumble, for Bobby and his loss, and for Kat, a young life lost.

Someone reported them missing, someone remembered them and cared enough to put those posters up. Maybe on the surface, in real life, there are telephone poles with the exact missing posters containing the same faces and same information right on the blanched paper. Or maybe this is the backrooms playing you for a fool when you have no one out there that would do this for you. No one to report you missing, no one to notice your absence or to look at their side and think that something is missing.

“At least they got my information right.” Bobby’s voice cuts through the silence. He breathes her name, quiet, guilty, grieving. He said it quietly, and yet loud in your ears. Sighing, he clears his throat, clammy hands shoved in his pockets. “I look good for a missing person…”

“Now who’s emotionally constipated?” You attempt at a joke, smile wavering, unsure how to talk to him about what lies ahead. This must feel like seeing your own gravestone right in front of you. “Are you okay, Bobby?”

“Yeah, I uh,” he sucks in his teeth, shaking his head and shuffling his feet with unease. “I think my mom did this. She would–she would remember.” She would notice him gone. Someone is waiting for him on the other side, a loved one that would be devastated if Bobby never gets back home.

“I’ll get you back home to her.” You utter determinedly, even though you could hardly believe it yourself.

“Fuck, what do I tell her?” There’s a sullen edge to his tone that you’re awfully familiar with. You’ve heard this in group therapies where you never spoke a word even after gentle coaxing, even after all the eyes land on you. “What do I tell Kat’s parents?” There were people waiting for her as well, and they’ll never see her again, they’ll never hear her voice again. It cuts you more than the razor ever did. “They never liked me but—that’s fucking understandable.”

“Bobby, I—”

He turns on his heel and looks at you with an undistinguishable expression, his hand twitches like he’s about to reach for you, but decides not to.

“D’you want to smoke with me?”

—

You and Bobby walk around the yellow wallpaper corridors, it still reeks of the same damp carpets that lingers in the back of your throat but it’s a more familiar scent that shouldn’t make you feel like it should be comforting but it does. And so does the hum, that soft timbre rolling around in the walls, calling for you to press your ear against it like before. But after you felt the walls curl around your skin, trying to absorb you into the sea of yellow, you resist the call.

The lights above hum in that same dissonance, that flat fluorescent drone, a prickly sound akin to crickets singing in the summer heat at night. It turns into mere background noise the longer you hear it. Bobby seems to feel the same way when he walks around the weird hallways with you side by side. He keeps his hands inside his pockets, back slightly hunched, an invisible heaviness lingering between his shoulder blades. His midriff is showing between the fabric of his white crop top and the jean shorts, hip bones catching the light, lighting him in that sickly yellow.

Bobby doesn’t look the same when you first met him, he’s missing his camera that you know he misses the heaviness of it in his hand. The gaze through the lenses, a shield between him and reality is no longer there, and he is forced to face what’s in front of him, to truly see reality with his own eyes.

His blue eyes are duller, you’ve noticed it ever since you both fell into the pool, it still has that spark but it doesn’t shine the same when you saw him in that corridor. His sharp edges are sharper, more intense, even though he eats enough, maybe it’s the stress wearing him thin.

“When you asked to smoke with me, what do you mean exactly?” You ask tentatively, too afraid to breach through the silence. “What are we even looking for?”

“Here.” He stops in front of a pair of double doors with a low slope leading to it. It descends downwards, and the similar sight doesn’t escape him. “This could be it. Somewhere we can relax.”

“Bobby, we’re supposed to be looking for the outpost.” You tell him calmly, brows knitted in worry.

“We are.” He’s already sliding down, keeping himself steady with his hands on each side of the wall. The previous slope he encountered was deep and descends into darkness, this one doesn’t look like that as he could see light filter through the crack under the doors. “I just— just need a fucking break.”

“Hold on, Bobby, we should be careful—”

He throws caution into the wind as he shoulders the door open. Nothing attacks him or yanks him into the room, instead, he opens the door wider, and what greets you inside makes you raise your brows.

Rows upon rows of velvet lined seats are inside, all perfectly lined up as the warm yellow light shines up front. Bobby opens the door even wider, and you both see a lit theater stage complete with an orchestra pit and those familiar red velvet curtains.

Bobby whistles lowly, the sound carries into the expansive room. “C’mon.” He simply coaxes you in, a hand reaching for you whilst the other holds the door open. “It looks like it’s safe.” Fingers flexing, head tilting, he huffs out a breath. “Please, hero, I know you need the rest too.”

“Fine,” your hand slides over to his palm, warm, smooth, with the pads of his fingertips calloused from years of playing the guitar. Now you know the reason. “But only because you asked nicely.”

“See how far being nice gets you?” His gentle hold helps you slide down the slope whilst he keeps an eye on your back, watching out for any malignant entities. That has become a recent habit of his.

“I could be nice.” Letting out a strained breath, you make it inside and Bobby follows behind, shutting the door closed with a click.

“Only sometimes,” he walks ahead, eyes roaming around the large room, from the wooden rafters above to the fine filigree decorated around the stage. His voice echoes around the empty space, it’s like you two snuck into the theater at the dead of night just to make out. “Come on, let’s find our seat.”

“Remember when you said you’re going insane?” You watch at the edge of the seats as he shimmies into a row like how one would at a packed movie theater. “I’m starting to think that you are.”

“Don’t be a party pooper.” Scoffing a laugh, he pulls the seat down and plops himself onto the plush cushion before doing the same to the one beside him and patting the seat for you. “Saved you a seat.”

“How did you even know about this place?”

“I didn’t.” Shrugging, he huffs, head turning around the silent theater. “I just had a feeling. This place…fucks you up. Nothing makes sense, up isn’t up and down isn’t down, it’s instinct and trusting your gut that makes more sense to follow. So, I don’t know, hero, I just felt that this place is safe.”

Maybe that’s how you thought the sailboat room was safe, a gut instinct, something inherently natural to humans to feel if a place is a safe haven or not. Or maybe this place just heard his wants and gave him a room to rest in, like how you wanted water and you fell into one. You’re probably truly insane if you think that the backrooms are granting your wishes.

Sighing, you relent and follow him. After dredging knee deep pool waters to walking through hazards and osha violations, the theater room is a nice reprieve. It’s beautiful in a way, like staring at an empty backyard at night where the moonlight shines on the bushes and you could only hear the scampering of little critters hidden behind it. It’s creepy, yet it gives off the same feeling as walking around a school at night where you’re used to seeing a lot of people and instead you just see empty classrooms and dark corridors. You expect some noise, like someone practicing on stage where their footfalls clatter on the hardwood floors, or a violinist tuning their instrument’s strings. But it’s as quiet as the rest of the places you’ve been through.

Yet the hum is much stronger here. More persistent. You would press your head against the velvet walls but you use the sight of Bobby as your guide, keeping your eyes on him and giving him your full attention, it helps in ignoring the song of the walls.

He pats the seat again when you reach his side, feeling your apprehensiveness. “It’s not going to eat you.”

“What if there’s something lurking in here too?” You look down at him worriedly, seeing the warm golden light illuminate the side of his face, exacerbating the dark circles underneath his eyes. “Like last time?” Your voice drops a timbre, the pads of your fingers grasping at your neck that is slowly scabbing over after your nails broke skin.

“Then we run or I beat the shit out of it like the one before it.” Bobby swallows thickly, patting the seat again. His eyes pleads, he needs this.

“Okay, just a few minutes.” Nodding, you sit down beside him, the chair creaks under you, and it gives off that unmistakable squeak at the hinges as you sit back and the seat tilts back from the movement. “What now— what the fuck?”

“What?” He chortles, looking at you through his lashes when he has procured a rolled up joint from his pockets, there’s a ziplock on his lap containing a couple more inside. “Are you a goody two shoes like I thought?”

You roll your eyes, lift a leg up over the other as you shake your head. “I’m just confused, you had that the whole time?”

“Yeah,” shrugging, he places it in between his lips. The lighter clicks as sparks fly against his face, lighting him up in warmer light. “It got wet when we took a swim, but…” he manages to light it when the flames finally billow out from the lighter. “Thankfully it’s in a ziplock bag.” Taking a long drag, wispy smoke dancing in the air, and filling it with the unmistakable earthy smell, his shoulders relax and he reclines back, keeping it in for a moment before exhaling. Bobby moves his hand over to you casually with the joint tucked in between his index and thumb. “Do you want one? No peer pressure trust me, I’d like it more if I have it all to myself.”

“How generous.” A laugh escapes from your huff, rolling your eyes as you flutter your lips. Weighing your options, you suck in a breath. “You know what, fuck it.” Biting your lip, you look around you, watching for the tell tale signs of an entity keeping watch, you find none. So you take it, your fingers brushing along his warm hand.

“Atta girl.” His legs perches up on the seats in front of him, one foot over the other comfortably, completely relaxed.

You place it between your lips, tasting him accidentally, the taste of the sweetened almond water hits your tongue first before the smoke does. You let both linger, the earthy smoke that is slightly sweet hitting the back of your throat. Taking a long drag, you feel his eyes on the side of your face.

Bobby whistles lowly, chuckling and smiling at you. “Not a goody two shoes like I thought. Don’t fucking hog it all.”

Your eyes flick at him, glimmering under the light as you exhale. You feel the fuzzy feeling wrap around your skull, tugging at the back of your head, but it doesn’t hit as well as the ones back home.

“I didn’t know you smoke.” Bobby licks his lips, mouth already turning dry.

You hand the joint back to him and he hums in thanks before taking a puff, exhaling out spheres of smoke into the air. “It helps.” You don’t need to elaborate when he knows perfectly well what it means. “You?”

“High school, junior year was hard for me.” He gives it back to you lazily as he rolls his shoulders and completely sinks in his seat.

“Yeah, high school is either a shit time for someone or the best time of their life.” You take a quick puff as the burn settles on the roof of your mouth, nose filling with the earthy scent. “There’s no in between.”

He scoffs out a laugh as you pass the joint over to him. “I think I fit in the ‘in between’ category. It was good until it wasn’t. D’you think we would be friends back then?”

“Probably not.” Shaking your head, you see him stare at you in your peripheral. When you turn to look back, he’s already looking away.

His tongue flicks over his lips, eyes staring at the empty stage. “Have you ever seen a play? Like a real one, with a big production, not the ones made by theater kids at school.”

“Like Broadway type?” He hums in reply, taking a long drag before passing it to you. And you could see it in his eyes how much it’s melting all his worries away, for now at least. He lets the smoke settle on his tongue, letting it singe his insides before exhaling out. “No, I wish I had.”

His neck cranes to you, eyes half lidded, giving you a strange look. “I’ve got a confession to make.”

“Okay…” you chortle atop the joint, inhaling and exhaling. You feel the slight tug at the back of your head, that warm lazy feeling encompassing you enough to dull your instincts and send tingles through your body. “I’m not a priest but okay.”

“Obviously you’re not.” Bobby snorts, chuckling deeply, a rumble in his throat as he rubs his clammy palms on his jean shorts. Your brow rises to your forehead. “I mean it as a compliment. You’re too pretty to be one.”

“Fuck,” you scoff out a laugh. “so you’re flirty when you get high.”

Bobby snatches it from your hands, his touch searing hot, hotter than before. “Shut up, I’ve got a fucking confession and who knows if we’ll get out of here.” His head tilts back against the plush seat like it’s heavier than usual. He smiles lopsidedly, the same smile you briefly saw before he saw the missing poster. He takes a long drag, smoke coming out in puffs between his lips.

“We’ll get out of here but go on.” He’ll get out of here. Your eyes drag along his jaw as it flexes with an inhale and exhale.

“Your optimism fucking scares me, hero, but, confession.” Looking at you through his lashes, he uses the joint between his fingers to point at you for emphasis whilst he leans on the armrest to get closer to you. “I’ve always wanted to be a director, like for films and shit. And I thought the theater plays were just a cheap shit copy of cinema until my mom got me and…” he blinks, licking his lips before continuing on. “...she got me tickets for my birthday to see fucking Phantom of the Opera and it was…” he takes another drag, head lolling back to exhale the smoke away from your face, neck flexing, the light catching it. “...it was fucking great. I missed out on good shit because I thought theater was for nerds.” The buzz has completely melted him. Turning back to you, he has a lazy, comfortable smile. “So, when we get out of here we’ll watch a show, whatever you want, Cats or fucking Rocky Horror Show, your pick, hero. My thanks for saving my ass.”

“You’ve got a lot of promises for me, Bobby.” You say warmly, leaning close, head tilted with a gentle smile. And mouth filled with cotton. “First it was the guitar lessons, now a show.”

He shrugs, finally giving you the rest of the joint, his touch lingering a second more. “I just want to show you what you would’ve missed if you…” he pauses, a weighted gaze on you as he smiles tenderly. “...it’s my way of being nice, okay? Don’t read too much into it, dude.” Leaning back into his seat, his cheeks are flushed warm, inflated before letting out the air. “It would be great if a show suddenly played here right now!”

His sudden scream makes you jump in your seat, heart thudding, a hand instinctively holding onto his arm. “Fucking hell, Bobby.” You look around you, scanning the area for threats, you find the place as empty as before.

“What?” He laughs, a true guffaw that echoes as he grins. “It was worth a shot.”

You shake your head at him with a subtle smile. “I’ve got a question.” Leaning back, you finish the rest of it as the aftertaste lingers in the back of your throat, the buzz giving you a hazy feeling, like you’re in between dreaming and wakefulness. Bobby makes a finger gun gesture at you, eyes still looking forward at the stage as if actors in costumes would suddenly appear. “Bobby, were you getting high this whole time? Is that why you’re so relaxed?”

He slowly faces you, nose scrunched, puffing out a laugh. “Fuck you, no.” Turning his head away, he sniffs, a hand squeezing his nose before his palm hits his lap with a soft thud. “Twice, when you woke up in the boat and we talked about the fake stars. Then at the pool before…when I was swimming and you got all…” his fingers wiggle around in front of him, “y’know. Sobered up real quick when you screamed my name though.”

You just stare at the side of his face, features softer under the warm yellow light, softer when his guilt marrs his expression. “Fuck, Bobby…”

“I know, I shouldn’t, but…” his fingers play at the plastic on his lap, dragging his thumb and index right at the seam. “it’s fucked. I know it is.”

“Yeah, I don’t blame you.” The ash falls from the paper and right onto your jeans, leaking warmth onto the skin underneath. You flick the rest of the ash away and stamp out the flames right on the arm rest and toss it into the cup holder. “Just don’t do it again until you know that we’re in a place that’s completely safe. And yes I’m being hypocritical right now for saying it but— fucking whatever.” Fingers kneading at the space between your brows, you feel the buzz right there.

A moment passes and he stays silent, his blue eyes that seem to glow even bluer against the red velvet seats glances at you every so often, gauging out your emotions without the comfort of a camera lens in his hand.

When you hear the familiar slosh of water against a plastic bottle, you turn to him as he passes you the rest of the almond water. “You hungry?”

“A little.” Taking the bottle, you watch him rummage through the backpack, cans and plastic bags clinking against each other. “Your weed is weak as shit, Bobby.”

“Oh fuck off.” A laugh escapes him. “If this is weak to you then what do you smoke, fucking meth?”

You laugh, a sound lingering in the room that has good acoustics for something that shouldn’t exist in the first place. Bobby gives you a look that you’re not privy to before taking out a small bag of potato chips you two found atop a solid beach ball. “No, fucking hell, no, that’s horrible. What do you take me for?”

He opens the bag and the scent of sour cream and onions fill the room amidst the lingering earth scent. “A survivalist whom I thought was a goody two shoes. Turns out you’re as bad as me, hero.” Shaking the bag, he offers it to you first as you dig your hand in, getting a couple of chips.

“Okay, Robert Franklin.”

“Fuck, you saw that?” His reddened eyes widen, taken aback.

“Yeah, Robert Franklin,” you say his name with a giggle, chin atop your palm as you pop the chips in your mouth. It tastes exactly the same, except for the old aftertaste. “sounds like a politician’s name.”

“Yeah, that’s why I go by Bobby.”

“It’s better honestly.” The chips crunches in your mouth, chewing and letting the taste settle beside the lingering burning taste. “Like a jolly baby boy’s name.”

Bobby almost chokes on a chip, chuckling and patting his chest. “Fuck you.”

“What do you want to be when you grow up, little Bobby?” Teasing, you nudge his elbow and he makes a face, nose scrunched, shoveling more chips in his mouth when the retort he has in mind short circuits. “Were you a newspaper boy, Bobby? Just doing rounds on your little bike with a bell all over the neighborhood?”

Snatching the almond water from you, Bobby chews loudly to annoy you. But it only makes your grin wider, a laugh in your throat. “Shut up, no I wasn’t.” He chugs the water before facing you with what he probably thinks is an intimidating look. You only smile at him wholeheartedly, endeared. “What do you want to be when you grow up, huh? ‘Ms. Sewing club president.’”

“I wasn’t the club president, I was actually shit at sewing.” Your eyes turn at your lap, downcast as the smile faints, and yet the softness stays. “I don’t know actually. I never thought I’d live this long to be honest.”

Bobby’s breath hitches in his throat, wiping the trickling water from his chin with his shirt, he looks at you solemnly. You expect him to say sorry, for him to pity you or say the same words you’ve heard from people who don’t know how but tries to anyway just to say something or to try to make it all better. Instead, he takes your hand on your lap, a hand so gentle you didn’t register the touch right away as he envelopes his fingers around your palm.

“When we get out of here,” His voice lowers, a mere whisper just for your ears as he ducks down to meet with your eyes. Your vision is filled with blue, his blue eyes, Bobby blue. “we’ll figure out what you want to do. I promise you.”

“What if I never figure it out?”

He shrugs, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Then we’re stuck together until you do, sorry.” It’s a halfhearted apology, and yet it’s better than a whole one. “Together, we’ll figure it out together, hero.”

Your brows fold together, lips wobbling. “Why?” Why help, why me, why do this for me?

“Because you deserve to live too.”

Your eyes search those brilliant blue eyes for a lie, a tease, an untruthful thing tucked in his irises that intends to hurt. Something that says, ‘I’m only saying this to you because I don’t want you to leave and fend for myself.’ or, ‘because I can, not because I want to.’ And yet you only find truthfulness in his eyes, he truly believes that you deserve it, to live for yourself not just for others, not just for him.

It’s one thing to die for someone, it’s heroic. But living, staying alive for someone is for yourself too. And it’s just as heroic. Staying alive despite everything is heroic.

“So three things now,” his hand squeezes you once, clearing his throat as his breath trembles. “three things I promise to do with you.” Bobby laughs nervously.

“Les Misérables.”

“What?”

You squeeze him back, it sends shockwaves through his arm. “That’s the show I want to watch with you when we get out of here.”

The grin spreading across his face lights up your vision like how the sun would.

—

“You good?” He asks, a hand clasped around your own unabashedly. You don’t know why he’s holding onto you, maybe he’s still wobbly from the joint you two shared, or he fears that you’ll get taken right from his side. Either way, you let him.

“Yep.” You pop the letter ‘p’ in your mouth as the sound bounces off the yellow wallpaper. You’re nervous as you feel his warmth right on your palm, like clasping onto a lit light bulb, warm and light at the same time. “Bobby?”

“Yeah?” His eyes wander around the corridor before taking a turn to the right, randomly choosing the path for the two of you for a while now.

“Why are you holding my hand right now?”

“Sorry.” Flinching, Bobby’s fingers release you. “Sorry, it’s just when we stopped by that weird room with the square pitfalls, I— nothing, I forgot to unhand you.”

“It’s okay.” You smile at him, the lights above flicker in and out before steadying. “I understand.” Holding out your hand to his side, pinky brushing along his palm, you invite him. “May I? If it helps you calm down.”

Bobby lets out a sigh he didn’t know he was holding before taking your hand again on his own. His hold has more thought put into it, tender yet filled with trepidation. “Yeah, sorry I’m being such a little bitch right now.”

“Maybe we should hold off from smoking before exploring.”

“I took a nap and I thought that was enough.” He shakes his head rapidly, trying to shake off the haze over his eyes. “Why aren’t you all antsy?”

“I told you, your weed is weak as shit, Bobby—” something catches your attention. A scent, something so familiar, that old laundry smell that sticks in the back of your nose. You know it too well when you spent days in that room just listening to the hum in the walls.

Bobby stops abruptly when you freeze on the spot and the intertwined hands hang in between the two of you. “What? You’re doing that thousand yard stare again.”

“Can you smell that?” Your eyes flick to his blue ones.

Bobby takes a whiff of the air around him, head tilted up, nose up. “Like cat piss?”

“I think that’s just the carpet…” mumbling, you use your nose to find the room. You turn a corner, leading Bobby this time around, hand in hand.

“Hero, what are you doing?” He chuckles nervously, letting you guide him through different corridors.

“I think I know this place.” Your hand brushes along the wall, and right beside it is a washing machine dial embedded into the wallpaper. The hum entices you, but Bobby’s hand on yours ground you to reality.

“What?”

“Follow me.” With quicker strides, you walk past rooms that are quite familiar to you, like you saw it in a dream once, too foggy and blurry at the edges, but you know you saw it even when the adrenaline inside your veins were helping you run.

Bobby follows behind, head on a swivel, keeping watch for the both of you. His thumb brushes along the back of your hand, making your mind stutter as you pause in the middle of a junction.

Taking a deep breath, a hand running along the wall, you see it, a ship’s wheel stuck into a wall.

“We’re close.” Muttering, you concentrate on finding your way.

Peter was right, it’s a directionless place. There are doors leading to another wall, windows with no glass, just a wooden frame sinking into the wall. You got lost once and had to turn back, somehow, the hum quiets down for you, refusing to help you unlike before when it warned you or helped you find a way to get away.

It refuses to help you leave this place.

“Holy fuck.” Your breath hitches in your throat when the smell grows stronger when you find a crevice in between two walls where the lights are brighter on the other side. If you squint you could just see it— the radio.

Bobby tilts his head, narrowing his eyes. “What is it?”

“I think you need glasses, Bobby.” You laugh victoriously, tugging him into the sliver of space tucked in between. “Come on.”

“Don’t be a cryptic motherfucker.” He chuckles back, albeit wobbly. “Seriously, are you gonna kill me here? Are you trying to find a torture chamber?”

“Bobby,” you turn to him, body already shimmying into the niche. Your smile makes him more confused. “Lay off the weed for a bit, yeah? It makes you anxious.”

“No, this place makes me anxious. Weed makes me flirty and horn— fuck, is that what I think it is?” The hand around your own trembles as he laughs. “You did it. I can’t— you really are a hero, hero.”

“Don’t thank me yet, Bobby.”

The two of you move in tandem, carefully shimmying, clothes rustling, backs dragging along the wall from the tight squeeze.

You bolt from the walls immediately after getting out, already reaching for the radio. Bobby stands beside you, marveling at the technology and equipment left by the researchers.

“Async.” Bobby reads out loud, he finds a clipboard filled with documents on it whilst you calibrate the radio frequency. “Almost everything on here has been redacted. Not the government my ass.”

“Hello?” There’s an electric buzz on the other side, the radio in your hand is heavy, all metal as you wet your dry lips. “We need help.” Bobby has his full attention on you now, breathing heavily, unease mar his features whilst his head is on a swivel. “Please, if someone’s listening we need help.” Your voice catches at the edges, eyes glancing at Bobby. “There’s two of us, I— Peter Tench sent us. He’s alive, he told us to find a radio, an outpost. Please respond, tell us how to leave, or fucking get us out of here.” There’s only static. “Hello?”

You let go of the button, more electric buzz, more hum, nothing.

Bobby snatches the radio from you, pressing the button as he curses them out. “We’ve been stuck here for fucking days, I know you’re listening, you fucking cu—”

You tug at Bobby’s sleeve, looking directly at the wooden wall that you broke once upon a time. The wood is all patched up, replaced with another slab of plywood. The radio is worthless when just beyond that door is the ceiling you came from. You’ve been too hyperfixated on the radio that you forgot that the exit is nearby.

This place is directionless, this place makes your memory foggy, blurred, like a dream you have forgotten once you wake up. But your sense of smell is a powerful reminder of a memory. Like your mother’s perfume, the smell of freshly baked cookies from your childhood, the scent of salty air, and Bobby’s cologne.

“What, hero?” He clicks his tongue, pausing from hurling all the curses he knows at the radio.

You’re taking the hammer from your belt, weighing it in your hand when you lift it above your head and smash the plywood.

“Fuck!” Bobby shrieks in shock.

Just like last time, you let everything out with every hit of your hammer. Shards of splintered wood rain down upon you, some landing on your hair, a few caught in the fabric of your jacket. Yet you continue on despite a shard coming too close to your eye.

Heaving, you make a big enough hole to go through. You slowly turn to Bobby, panting with a wide grin. “Leave the radio, I found the exit.”

Bobby blinks at you like you grew two heads.

“That’s the same radio I found, Bobby.” You step through the hole and gesture around you. “And this is the same place I walked through to get here.”

Realization flickers on his face. “You mean—?”

“You wanna get out of here and watch Les Misérables with me?” Holding out your hand through the broken down wall, you smile at him, a genuine warm smile that you haven’t seen on yourself in years.

“Yeah.” Is all he could say when his mind rushes a thousand miles per hour. Bobby takes your hand, fingers slightly trembling as you pull him through. “We’re going home?” There’s a childlike disbelief in his tone and expression.

“Yeah, Bobby, we’re getting out of here.” With his hand in yours, you guide him through the room.

The black sludge is still on the floor, this time it has numerous shoe footprints on the muck, as if a group of people passed by here. Judging from the repaired wall, it seems that’s the case. The camera is still on the wall, pointed right at a lifesized caveman cardboard cutout, or what’s left of it on the floor when it has been ripped to shreds with its speakers broken and shattered by your feet.

Bobby carefully jumps over the sludge when you just walk through it, leaving your own footprints on the carpet.

“What’s that?” He points at a space in the wall with a piece of it propped up beside the entrance. “Are those hangers?”

“Yeah, that’s the long way, let’s not go there.” You continue to lead him and the relief that washes over you is palpable when you see the dangling climbing rope you dropped through the ceiling. “I can’t believe it.”

“Is that where you came from?” Bobby’s voice trumps over the incessant drone of the fluorescent lights. Head tilted up, he grimaces at the scent of the laundry pile.

“Yeah, come on.” You’re practically bouncing on your feet, tugging him towards the rope. You could already feel the cold chilly air through the ceiling. You’re one climb away from home. The dangling rope doesn’t make you scratch at your neck until it bleeds, nor turn your limbs numb. The sight of it, especially with Bobby beside you brings you hope. You made it, you saved a life. “You go first.”

“No, you first.” Bobby squeezes your hand, taking your attention away from the ceiling. “I’ll help you climb up.”

“I thought you’d be eager to go first.”

“What can I say, I’m a changed man.” Sending you a wink, you both climb up the hill of clothes, helping each other as you two go up. You could feel him tremble with tamped down excitement as you put your hands on the rope, foot in the footholds and start to climb up. “Careful.” His palm is on the small of your back, warmth felt through your jacket, then hovering under you when you’re nearly up the rope. “You got it?” Bobby readies to climb up.

“Yeah.” Smiling widely, your hand is mere inches away from the ceiling when you hear it— the rustling, that fabric shifting against the other. The familiar shuffling that turns your head from calm to flight. You pause, watching the hallway you two came from.

There’s a shadow, a lumbering form. And it shuffles closer to you.

Bobby is saying your name, tugging at the rope for you to wake up from your stupor. “Hero— fuck!” He’s climbing up with you and you jolt awake, fingers tingling, chest heaving. “Go! Fucking go!” He’s halfway up, head turning back and forth from the shadow and over to you.

“Fuck!” You reach up to leave, and you hit a solid ceiling.

Dread washes over you like the tides on the beach.

“What are you doing? Go!” Bobby holds onto your ankle, he turns frantic, panicked when the sound grows closer. The shuffling, the rustle sends your whole body into an unsteady shudder.

Your palm meets the smooth ceiling tile. Over and over again, you feel how solid it is against your hand.

Panic sets behind your ribcage. Slithering up your heart as it pinches and squeezes, trying to burst open your hammering heart.

Patting it wildly, your hand doesn’t go through, no phasing through.

You scream in despair, accidentally punching a hole right through the ceiling where the ventilation is supposed to be when there is only darkness behind it. A sliver of space for the lights that goes on for miles, the plenum where there are no wires connecting each light, no source of electricity. And most importantly, no laundry shop, no familiar smell of detergent, and no chilly air. No threshold. No reality.

It’s closed.

Your way out is closed. You’re locked out of reality.

“Fuck!” You cry, forehead pressed against the rough rope.

“Why—” Bobby croaks out, still clinging to the rope, still clinging to hope. He calls your name, body trembling as a stuttered breath leaves his lips.

You look at him and it’s enough to shatter his hope.

“We need to go.” He completely lets go of the hope of reaching home. Scrambling down the rope, Bobby panics, movements too frantic as his foot gets stuck on the footholds just like you had.

“Bobby!” The rustling grows nearer, you’re afraid to look.

Bobby falls backwards, flailing and trying to stay upright as he dangles above the pile of clothes. His shirt is hitched to his chest from gravity pulling at it, muscles straining and taut. He turns to the sound, he didn’t mean to, he’s just as afraid to look, or maybe his morbid curiosity made him look.

The rope dangles from side to side, it turns towards the rustling, and upside down he sees— you.

Not the you he knows, with those guarded smiles and uneasy hands. Eyes looking at his forehead whilst you pretended to look into his own, he always noticed it, but he never said anything because saying it opens something that he’s afraid he can never close. Bobby pries, but he doesn’t force it out when he knows it would be harder to close, breaking what is already built between you. You’re alive and that’s what matters to him because you fought against yourself, you fought to stay in this world and he’s glad that you did because he met you. You’ve become an invaluable friend, a companion in this hell, he found himself caring for you, a fondness. But as he stares at this version of you, he’s terrified beyond belief, not the calm and ease he feels when he is around you.

This you is mangled, damp, dead.

And you just entered its home.

“Wh–what the fuck!” Bobby shrieks, trying to fold himself to pull his foot out of the footholds. “Hero!”

He calls for you, asking for an ounce of hope that once slithered in his chest. But the look on your face dashes whatever is left, you freeze, completely still on the spot, like a vine curled around a rope, dangling there, moving as the rope moves, getting carried by the wind. You look at the entity like you’re looking at your own tomb.

Emptiness, dread, grief, you stare at yourself, a ghost of what could’ve been, of what you might’ve ended up as. It’s not like pirate Clark with its large form and gangly arms, this you is much more akin to real life. Whereas the pirate came from your nightmares, this came from the past.

The entity’s head is hanging from its broken neck, looking at you upside down as the head hits its chest with every movement. The neck is twisted and marred, skin folded atop the other. And it wears your face, not a memory of your face that’s all wrong, or a photograph of you whilst you moved mid shutter. No, this is undoubtedly you, a face that is contorted into sheer agony, a hurt that you are familiar with.

Lines of red rope are tied around its arms, sporting the same flowery bomber jacket that rustles and shuffles, and underneath is a pair of swim shorts and a rash guard, the same one you wore that day, a blue one, the same shade as his eyes. Its hair is damp, perpetually wet as it clings to its dangling face and chest with its slouched shoulders.

It doesn’t speak, it doesn’t make a sound other than the rustling, even the footsteps are silent, almost afraid of being perceived.

One thing breaks through your mind, a thought— you bore this being, you made it exist, and you believe that you did, that you made it so, and it has been hunting you ever since you fell in this place. It waited for the right time, watched you with its reddened eyes, always around a corner that you didn’t take, behind a wall that you didn’t press your ear to, always there, like a ghost that haunts every room you are in.

It’s a distorted mirror of you.

Your name echoes around you as the lights flicker in and out. Bobby grasps at your ankle, his warm clammy hand clawing at your skin. The hum is stronger, a tug at your sternum as it sings at a higher dissonance akin to an alarm. It wakes you, it screams, it tells you to run.

The entity’s hand reaches for Bobby’s face, its body half climbing up the mountain of fabric like a spider on wet tiles, trying to find steady ground as its fingers curl in and out around itself, trying to grasp at your companion, your friend.

If this is the end, Bobby will forgive you.

So you jump from the rope, arms wide, landing right on its back, and taking it down with you.

Your body sinks down onto the pile of clothes, dragging you down along with it like quicksand. The more you struggle the further you sink.

Bobby screams for you on the surface, and you feel its arms wrap around you.

It embraces you like the one before it, trying to take your warmth as the smell of mold encompasses you, scampering into your nose as the acrid smell suffocates you. Its palm grasps at your face, long nails digging in, its fingers are unnaturally long, oddly long as it holds your entire face, and you see in between its fingers as Bobby falls from the rope harshly, landing on his shoulder. He groans, the sound barely heard from the fabric in your ears.

He screams your name with a desperation that curdles the words on his tongue. clawing his way to you, digging desperately.

His frantic blue eyes are what’s left of the surface as you see it in between cottons and polyester.

You don’t thrash around when any movement makes you sink even deeper, eyes wide, begging for Bobby to leave you behind and run. You granted him time, and he’s wasting it all to save you.

Light breaks through, and his hand reaches for you to take.

Bobby looks at you like you’re worth saving.

So you reach up, the pads of your fingers grazing his own, a mere brush against his calloused fingertips. Still, you sink further and further, the mountain of clothes burying you alive, the stench of sweat and grime suffocating you like the hand atop your face. The entity drags you down, enveloping your whole form as you feel its arms and legs wrap around you, if it wasn’t sinister, it would’ve been comforting, a shield against the world, a hug from yourself.

You scream Bobby’s name, trying to extend your hand as far as you could but he’s getting farther away from you, like looking up from inside a deep dark well that has the lingering stench of rot.

Bobby, your hero Bobby, jumps after you. Why would he? He could just leave you there to die in your own rotting arms, and yet he digs himself down, straining, heaving and desperate to get to you.

Until finally, he gets a hold of your hand, locking his fingers around your own as the entity’s back hits solid ground with a hard wooden thump. There’s a knock, barely heard from your muffled screams. But Bobby heard it, and something flashes in those ocean blue eyes of his— hope.

Bobby groans, his other hand reaching for something behind you, and his mouth opens, saying something, too quiet for you to hear above your own fear.

“Hold on!” He screams and the door opens behind you with a resounding click.

Suddenly, the ground falls behind you, the clothes go first, then the legs around you, then the arms as you go down along with it.

You’re dangling from the ceiling once again, fifty, a hundred feet off the ground as red encompasses around you. Your mirrored self hangs on around your waist, nails digging into your flesh, whilst clothes flutter out of the doorway.

Gasping, you hold onto Bobby’s hand, looking down you see a city, concrete skyscrapers with glass windows all around, and streets spanning around it complete with street lights and idle cars like any other city. All except for the red light illuminating around it, the crimson sun, the scarlet sky, like a dark room you’ve seen in old movies.

“Bobby!” With a shriek, vertigo takes over you, vision swirling, stomach churning from the height. You could feel Bobby’s hand turn clammy around your own. Looking up, you see him struggle to lift you up with one arm, whilst the other keeps him in place so you both don’t fall off.

“Just—!” His skin is aflame, red as he strains himself. “Fuck! Hold on!”

There’s a groan under you, a simple huff of breath, like a dying man trying to say his last words on his deathbed. When you look down, look at yourself clinging to you, it lets out a breath again, trying to say something, trying to communicate. It shocks your core, the others never let out a breath nor a single word, but this entity, this horrifying copy of yours tries to when it doesn’t even need to breathe.

“Wha—?”

“Fucking kick it!” Bobby yells gutterally, sweat dribbling off his brows.

Mouth clamping shut, you raise your leg and kick. And kick, and kick at its mangled neck with a resounding squelch of flesh that is too soft, too pliant to be one. And yet blood trickles out of its nose and mouth, its flesh and blood. Just like you.

Bobby has managed to lift you by your elbow, and with one last kick against its nose, it lets go. You watch as it falls, your own self falling down, down, down into the pavement with a sickening thud. For a moment it flew, just like you have.

You’re lifted up, and you suddenly find yourself tucked into Bobby’s arms. His whole body trembles, the aftershock that rattles his bones.

“You’re okay, fuck, you’re okay.” Bobby utters like an answered prayer against your skin, as if he’s trying to comfort himself rather than for you. His face hides against the crook of your neck, breathing you in, his sweat sticking to your skin, but you don’t mind as you tentatively wrap your arms around him. Just like how the entity wrapped itself around you. His fingers bunches up your jacket with a rustle of fabric.

It has always been you that was watching you. The one that made you run further into the mono yellow and into the arms of the warm hum. It was you who was watching you from the corner, the shuffling and the rustling has always been you.

You drove yourself into this place, you ran from yourself, you hid from yourself, you almost died because of you.

“I’m o–okay, Bobby.” You exhale a breath you didn’t know you were holding.

Bobby wants to be somewhere safe with you, anywhere, even if it’s a room in this place like the theater or the sailboat room where you tended to him and let him drink the last of your water even when your lips were dry and you were starving. Anywhere but here, as long as it doesn’t smell like old laundry that leads to a doorway that plunges you from the sky.

And all you want is for him to hold you.

Bobby leans away, moving the stray hair that sticks on your skin as he swallows the lingering adrenaline away. His blue eyes wander around your features, and he lingers, his gaze lingers before he brings himself against you again, holding you in place, a hand cupped on the back of your head whilst you can feel his chest rise and fall.

Your knuckles drag along his back, eyes closing for a moment before opening it.

There’s a door on the wall that wasn’t there before. An anomaly. You know it wasn’t there when it’s the same wall that you rested against it to feel the hum, to hear this place sing, where there’s a patch of dry carpet that is warm, where the tone lingers right in your sternum. The door is green with patches of blue, the same color as his eyes.

“Bobby.” You say after a minute of holding each other and staring at the door that has appeared out of nowhere.

“Yeah?” His chin moves atop your shoulder as he sniffs. Leaning away, his lashes clump together from the unshed tears.

“There’s a door.” Is all you could say, mind still frazzled from everything that transpired, from how he held you— still holds you on the damp carpet that has less clothes now.

There’s nowhere else to go.

Bobby follows your gaze, looking over your shoulder as he exhales a breath. “What do y–you think?” His tone is still wobbly, still shaking with unease.

“Together?” You look into his eyes.

“Yeah,” his hand cradles your cheek, warm, clammy, gentle. “Together.”

The two of you walk in together through the door, hand in hand, stride matching the other. The sun greets you, the green grass crunches underneath your feet, and birdsong filters in your ears.

You’re back home.

But the warmth is wrong, artificial. There is birdsong but there are no birds in the sky nor on the trees.

The smell is odd, the grass doesn’t smell like grass, nor the air feels like air. A mere copy of it, a distorted mirror of the woods.

There’s a pink house in the middle of the clearing, and it beckons you and Bobby over.

Bobby’s hold tightens around you, fingers laced together, hands trembling together. One look at him and you both know— You’re not out yet.

And you may never get out of here.

Hobie has the habit of distracting you whilst you’re getting ready for bed. Whether you’re brushing your teeth, his arm would be around yours whilst he joins you by your side, brushing his own teeth to the rhythm of yours. Sometimes when you’re showering you’d see his silhouette behind the curtains, just standing still, waiting for your permission to join you. Whenever you open the curtains and give him the green light, his whole face lights up like a kid in a candy store. Then there’s you taking off your makeup, just sitting in front of the vanity with the day shown on your tired face. And yet somehow, Hobie sees you as the hottest thing in the whole world, even when your eyeliner is all smudged around your eyes, or even when you look more like a panda than a goth.

It’s not just before bed either, he’s the same while you’re getting ready for the day. He trails after you like a duckling has imprinted on you. You ask him to pick an outfit and he chooses the best one for you after getting distracted by you in your underwear of course. Then he’d help you get ready, whether to help with your hair or with your makeup, he’s always a part of your routine. You don’t remember a day where he wasn’t a part of it. He distracts you to no end with kisses and soft touches, of course who could complain when you love it too. He’s clingy, but that’s because he doesn’t see you for the rest of the day when you’re both apart from each other.

For today though, you really want to get into the shower quickly to wash off the day’s gunk and burrow under the covers with Hobie cuddling you. But alas, you’re not quick enough when he gets out of the shower, a towel hanging loose around his hips, water droplets sliding down his bare torso and a face that lights up the moment he sees you.

You’re only halfway done in wiping off your makeup when he sidles behind you, chin resting on the crown of your head as his arms wrap around you. Hobie smells like citrus and your coconut shampoo as he takes a whiff of your hair. He’s the best kind of distraction.

“You smell like smoke, lovie.” He says tiredly, voice gravelly than usual as his hands squeeze your hips.

“I went on a walk today to go to the shops, and a smoke belching car fucking billowed smoke all over me.” Sighing, you lean against his damp chest, looking up at him briefly through your lashes.

Hobie continues to knead at your sides, easing you further against him. Distracting you even more with his warm touch. “D’you remember the plates?”

You chuckle, tilting your head at him through the mirror whilst you wipe the lipstick off of your lips, “you gonna key his car, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, that’s not very friendly of you.”

He hums, smiling softly as he takes a new make up wipe from the table to gently wipe away at your under eyes. “Spider-Man cares for the environment too. If keyin’ the bloke’s car helps stop the smoke then that’s jus’ me bein’ a hero.”

Smiling, eyes closed, you feel his feather light touch all over your face. “That makes sense.”

“I’ll write your name on the car for you as my declaration of love.” His index and thumb on your chin keeps your head in place, a touch so gentle and loving you could fall asleep right there.

You chortle, whilst he wipes at your jawline. “Please don’t do that.”

“Too late, already planning on it.” Once he gives you a much needed peck to your lips, you know that he’s done with wiping your make up off. “You off to shower?”

“Thank you, baby.” You chase his lips as he leans back down for another quick kiss. Taking the dirty make up wipes, you throw it in the trash whilst his hand never leaves your skin. “Yeah, a quick one, I just want to cuddle in bed.”

“...can I join?”

Your brows furrow as his thumb presses in between your brows. “You just showered.”

“Who says I can’t shower again? I fought the Lizard in the sewers today, y’know.”

“No, you didn’t, I saw the news, you fought Mysterio today.” You poke his lean stomach.

“Fuck the news,” Hobie’s nose scrunches, fluttering his lashes at you. “they don’t care about my lesser achievements.”

“You just want me to lather you up.” You coo, reaching over to cup his face as he leans down for you.

“That’s not a crime.” He answers smugly with a scoff.

“I didn’t say it was.” Kissing the tip of his nose, you could still smell the soap on him. “Just keep your hands to yourself inside the shower, Spider-Man.”

Grinning from ear to ear, he heaves you off the seat. “C’mon then so we could properly snog in bed.”

Hobie rolls over in bed, he takes a deep inhale of the chilly morning air and gets a whiff of your perfume. It’s as if his dream is still lingering in his sleep-addled mind. Turning over to the bedside table all limp limbs moving sluggishly, Hobie opens the drawer and takes out another alarm clock identical to the one he broke and brings out a polaroid of you he took at the airport before you left. You were looking over your shoulder with a sad smile, eyes still glistening from the tearful goodbye as you lug behind your suitcase.

“Mornin’, love.” He says to the picture of you, bringing it to his lips before gently placing it down on the bedside table right next to your perfume you purposely left so he could spray it all over the houseboat whenever he misses you. He’s on his sixth bottle, but whenever you two call, he shows you how much of the so-called original bottle is left.

Reluctantly sitting up, skin rising from the cold when the blanket falls from his bare torso, he has an intense urge to give you a call as he reaches for his phone. He’s already out of international minutes for the month even though it’s just the second week, but he could still send you the traditional good morning text he sends you every morning. He just feels irritable the whole day whenever he forgets to do it.

With one bleary eye open, he yawns and checks his messages. There’s one from Ned and it’s just a simple, “what are you two doing tonight?” from him. He leaves it unopened to remind himself to reply to it later once he’s got some caffeine in him. There’s one from Yuri, and it’s all just exclamation marks for some reason, to which he just replies a bunch of question marks. James left him a voice message, and when he plays it it’s just him screaming on the phone and telling him to wear protection. His brow raises at that, maybe the bloke is just drunk again. But not a single one of those messages is from you, not even a goodnight on your end, or the usual retelling of your day.

Hobie immediately feels like his day is going awful. For one, he woke up from a dream where you came home as a surprise, and two, it seems that you’ve forgotten to send him a text. He figures that you’re just busy, he understands that, but that doesn’t mean he’s casual about it, nope, he’s not even nonchalant about it, he’s very chalant about it. He misses you so much that he could even hear you humming from the kitchen.

Wait. He’s sure he’s not going insane.

Eyes widening, he flings the blankets off of him and rushes out of the bedroom and over to the kitchen with a slam of the door that he’s sure broke a part of the wall from the sheer force of it. He ignores the biting cold on his bare legs and torso as he sees you standing in the kitchen, wearing one of his old band tees and basking in the light whilst you make breakfast.

Hobie died in his sleep from all the beating from Doc Ock the other day and he has gone to heaven. Or that’s what it feels like when he sees you.

“Love?” His voice is sweet and tender as he braces himself on the doorway.

“Hey, morning, Hobs.” Your eyes glitters underneath the sunlight, head turning towards him, before your eyes roam down with a chuckle and a low whistle. “Damn, good morning to you too, Hobie junior.”

Ah, yes, that’s why he feels cold, he’s as naked as the day he was born. Then he remembers, that wasn’t a dream, you coming back home was real. He’s never making drinks ever again when he makes them with too much alcohol to chaser ratio. He could blame you for distracting him too much whilst he made it and you were basically pawing at him, but he can’t lie that it was a good distraction.

“Fuckin’ hell, you’re real.”

“I knew that third G and T was too much.” Chuckling, you open your arms to him, and he grabs the nearest clothing from him— your cardigan on the dining chair, as he ties it around his waist, walking over to you, eyes never leaving your form. “Hi, Wallace.”

“My Gromit.” Hobie wraps his arms around you, face burying in the crook of your neck, nuzzling his nose right at your pulse. “I thought I was dreaming.”

You coo, palms rubbing up and down his bare back as you warm him up with your touch. “Drinking was definitely a bad idea.” Giggling above his temple, you pepper the side of his face with kisses. “I’m here and I’m real, Hobs.”

He sighs in relief, shoulders slacking, muscles easing as he cuddles close. “‘m so fuckin’ glad it wasn’t jus’ a dream.”

“Me too,” pecking his cheek, you cup his face in your warm hands and pull him away gently. The softened look on his face almost made you pull him back against you if not for the pancakes sizzling in the pan and teetering from becoming burnt rocks. “Did I hear something crash in the room?”

“...no.” he pouts as your hands leave his skin so you could turn to flip the pancakes with ease. His arms still hold onto you, his chest against your back as you feel him breathe and rest his chin on your shoulder. “It was the alarm clock.”

“I’ll get you an indestructible one.”

He hums, lips finding the hinge of your jaw as his kisses trail from your face down to your throat. “I have enhanced strength, lovie.”

“Hobie, we need to have breakfast first…” you utter in between hitched breaths as his hands rub along your sides lovingly. “You told me that you wanted pancakes last night.”

“Did I?” He pauses, lips just underneath your ear lobe. “I can wait. ‘m not that hungry. For pancakes anyway.”

“What do you think you’re doing, hm?” Giggling from his kisses, you lean against him, careful with the spatula in hand.

“Makin’ sure that ‘m still not dreamin’.” His eyes are fully closed, kissing you blindly, as if he’s trying to remember your face through his lips.

“I can tell you that you’re not, Hobie.” You feel his rough palms go under your shirt, caressing your stomach affectionately.

“Jus’ shut the stove off, lovie.”

Who are you to say no as you feel heat bloom in your stomach? You close the stove, turn around to face him and he pulls away briefly to lift you by your legs, hands underneath your thighs as he looks up at you with reverence.

“There’s one thing we need to do to prove that we’re not dreamin’”

“And pray tell what is that?” Arms thrown over his neck, you beam at him, lower lip bitten to stifle a laugh.

“It’s in the bedroom though.” He feigns innocence, head tilted, the corner of his lips tugging into a not so subtle smirk.

Your grin was well worth the wait as your fingers gently tug at the curls on his nape. “Show me then.”

Hobie laughs, a hearty chuckle that you could feel reverberate through his chest as he carries you over to the bedroom and shuts the door closed with his foot. It’ll be a long and warm morning for the two of you.