moony

He checks the answering machine. The red light is steady. No messages. The last thing you said to him—actually said, out loud, in person—was I'm closing tonight, don't wait up. He'd grunted. Hadn't looked up from the TV. He remembers that now.

You stood in the doorway with your keys in your hand and your jacket half-on, and you looked at him. He realises now that you looked at him, really looked, like you were waiting for something, and he grunted.

He calls the store. Clark picks up, says you didn't show for your shift last night. Or the night before. Didn't call in either. Clark sounds worried, but not in a panicked way. Just the clipped, pragmatic worry of a man already calculating how to cover the hours. 

Bobby tries to sound like he already knew, like he's been handling it. He's the kind of boyfriend who would obviously know that his girlfriend's been missing for three days.

He hangs up, stands in the kitchen and looks at the apartment.

Your coffee mug is still on the drying rack. Your jacket's on the hook by the door. Your shoes—the white ones, the ones you wear everywhere, the ones he's made fun of a hundred times—are sitting by the mat. You didn't leave, didn't pack anything. You didn't take your shoes or anything at all.

Bobby files a missing persons report that afternoon. 

The cops tell him to come in the following morning.

The detective's name is Moreno. He's got a desk in the back of the precinct, a cup of coffee that's been sitting there long enough to develop a skin, and an expression that Bobby doesn't like. There’s no hostility. It’s the other thing, the worse one. Interest. 

“So,” Moreno begins, flipping open a notebook. “Three days.”

“Yeah.”

“And you noticed this morning?”

Bobby's jaw tightens. “I thought she was working doubles.”

Moreno lifts his eyes briefly. “For three days.”

“It's happened before,” Bobby says a little defensively. 

“Has it?” Moreno writes something down. Slow, purposeful, the pen moving like he wants Bobby to watch it, to feel the weight of each letter being recorded. “Walk me through the timeline, Bobby. When's the last time you actually saw her?”

Bobby tells him. The doorway. The jacket. The don't wait up. The grunt.

Moreno nods. Writes. “And after that? What'd you do that night?”

“Watched TV. Went to bed.”

“Alone?”

Bobby stares at him. Jesus Christ. “Yeah. Alone.”

“Okay.” Moreno takes a sip of his dead coffee. Sets it down. “We talked to your neighbours, Bobby. Just routine. The couple in 4B, the Nguyens, mentioned hearing arguments. Through the walls. More than once, over the past few months.” He looks up from the notebook. “You want to tell me about that?”

Bobby's chest goes tight. “Couples argue.”

“Sure they do. What were you arguing about?”

“I don't—stuff. Normal stuff. Dishes. Schedules.”

“They said it sounded pretty heated sometimes,” Moreno remarks. “Mrs Nguyen used the word volatile.”

Bobby feels something cold move through his stomach. “I never touched her. If that's what you're—”

“Nobody said that,” Moreno's voice is easy, perfectly calm. The practised calm of a man who's done this before. “But I've got a missing woman who was last seen by her boyfriend, who didn't notice she was gone for three days, whose neighbours describe an argumentative relationship. You can see why I need to be thorough.”

Bobby can see alright. Bobby can see exactly what this looks like from the outside, and the cold thing in his stomach turns to ice because it looks bad. It looks like exactly what it isn't, and there's no way to explain the difference between I was a shitty, negligent boyfriend who took her for granted and I hurt her without sounding like he's making excuses for both or covering his ass.

“We'd like to take a look at your camera equipment,” Moreno says. “Your footage. You're a camera guy, right? Clark at the store mentioned you're always filming.”

Bobby nods. Numbly.

They take the camera. They take the tapes, too. 

Bobby sits on the couch in the apartment and stares at the empty shelf where the equipment used to be, and feels naked in a way that has nothing to do with clothes. The camera was the last layer between himself and the world. They've taken it, and now there's just Bobby, sitting in an apartment full of evidence of his own failures, waiting for strangers to watch his footage and decide what kind of man he is.

They call him back in four days later. Moreno's got a different look on his face now. Still interested, but muddied, thoughtful. Like he's found something he wasn't expecting.

“We reviewed the tapes, Bobby,” Moreno says.

Bobby waits.

“There's a lot of footage of her,” Moreno says carefully. Neutral. Watching Bobby's face the way you'd watch a surface for ripples. “A lot. Some of it she doesn't seem to know about. You filming her while she's sleeping. While she's cooking. While she's reading.”

“The light was good,” Bobby says automatically, the old excuse, and it sounds hollow even to him.

Moreno lets the silence sit. Then, “Bobby. I've got a missing woman. Her boyfriend has hours of footage of her, some of it taken without her apparent knowledge. Her neighbours describe fights. The boyfriend didn't notice she was gone for seventy-two hours.” He leans forward, knotting his fingers on the table. “You see the picture I'm looking at, right? It doesn’t look good. If you want to tell me anything, I can help you—”

“That's not—I never hurt her. I was—”

“What were you?”

And Bobby opens his mouth to snap back with something defensive, sharp. Bobby, who uses his tongue like a blade when he feels cornered, rears up to go, and what comes out instead is:

“I love her.”

Not loved. There’s no past tense here. This isn’t careful distancing of a man constructing an alibi. Present tense, raw, graceless, blurted out like a cough. Like something expelled from deep in his lungs against his will. His voice breaks on her, and Bobby’s eyes burn. 

Moreno is staring at him, and Bobby is sitting in a police precinct with his chain tangled and his crop top wrinkled, his earring catching the overhead fluorescent light. And he looks, in that moment, exactly like what he is: a twenty-something-year-old asshole who didn't know what he had until the world seemingly swallowed it whole.

“I love her,” he repeats, quieter now. Like now that the word is out, he can't stop saying it, like the dam has cracked and the only thing behind it was this. “I love her, and I was—I wasn't good to her, I know that, okay? I know what it looks like, but I didn't—I would never—”

Moreno watches him for a long time. The precinct hums in the background. Phones, footsteps, murmur of voices.

They let him go. No evidence. No body. They're able to confirm his alibi, and ten again.

There’s no proof of anything except the fact that Robert Franklin is a man who films the woman he loves while she sleeps because he can't bring himself to tell her she's beautiful while she's awake.

He goes to the store that night.

Not because he thinks he'll find anything. The cops already searched it. Half-heartedly, briefly, the way you search a place when you've already decided the boyfriend did it, and the crime scene is somewhere else. 

They walked through the showroom and poked around the loading dock. Went down to the storage level, shone flashlights between the flatpack bookshelves and the plastic-wrapped headboards, and found nothing. Because there's nothing to find. 

Bobby just knows that this is the last place you were. 

That your hands touched the furniture down here. The inventory sheets, the shelving units, the boxes of cabinet hardware and drawer pulls you organised on the night shifts he couldn't be bothered to stay for. Your fingerprints are on everything. The ghost of your routine is embedded in the layout of this room. The way the boxes are stacked, the system you developed for sorting shipments by vendor, and the little handwritten labels in your writing on the bins. 

Bobby stands in the middle of it, and he can feel you. He can feel you the way you feel someone in a room they just left—the displaced air, the warmth fading from a surface, the sense that if he turned around fast enough, he'd catch the edge of you disappearing around a corner.

He sits down on the concrete floor. Puts his back against the wall. The far one, behind the shelving unit full of cabinet hardware, the one that feels different from the others in a way he can't articulate. Cooler. Thinner somehow. 

He doesn't plan to talk. But at one point, the silence gets too much, and it just… comes out. 

“Hey, baby. It's Bobby.”

His voice sounds strange in the empty room. Too loud, too small. Bouncing off the concrete and the flatpacks and coming back to him slightly changed, echoed.

“I don't know if you can hear me. I don't—this is stupid. This is really fucking stupid. Obviously, you can’t hear me because you’re not here. But I just—” He stops. Presses the back of his head against the wall. Stares at the ceiling. “The cops think I did something to you. They looked at me like—” He swallows. “I don't care about that. I don't care what they think. I just need you to know I'm looking. Okay? I'm looking, baby. I'm not gonna stop.”

The draft brushes against his palm. Cool. Steady. Like a pulse. 

He comes back the next night. And the next. And the next.

It becomes the only thing that makes sense. The apartment is a museum of his failures. Every unwashed dish, every unanswered question, every space where your things are slowly being buried under his carelessness. 

But the store is different. The store is where you were. The last place your body occupied space. Sitting in it feels like sitting in the shallow end of your absence rather than drowning in the deep. He can think down here. He can talk. He can say the things he should've said when you were standing in the doorway with your keys in your hand and your heart in your eyes, and he was looking at the TV.

Hey baby. It's me. Found one of your socks behind the dryer today. The fuzzy ones. I put it on the dresser. Just in case.

I keep thinking about Thanksgiving. When you burned the rolls, and I said, "guess we're going to my mom's next year", and you laughed, but you weren't really laughing. You were hurt. I knew, and I didn't fix it.

I'm sorry about the rolls. They were good. They were a little burnt, but they were good. You made them, and I should've eaten every single one.

Bobby pauses. Picks at the concrete with his thumbnail. The storage level smells like particleboard and cardboard. Somewhere deep in the room, he can feel that draft again. That impossible nowhere-breeze he still hasn’t found a source of.

I was thinking about that morning. In the kitchen. You were making breakfast, and you turned around with a spatula and asked if I wanted toast, and the light was behind you, and I—I felt this thing. This huge thing. Like my chest was going to crack open. And I said, "sure." I said SURE. You were standing there in my kitchen looking like that, and I felt the biggest thing I've ever felt, and I said sure and loaded film into my camera like it was nothing.

It wasn't nothing. It was everything. I just didn't know how to—I couldn't—

Bobby stops. Presses the heels of his hands into his eyes.

I was so scared you'd see how much I needed you and you'd leave. So I made you leave by not letting you see. That's the dumbest shits anyone's ever done. Baby. I'm so stupid.

He comes back every night. Even when there are no words. Even when he just sits with his hand on the wall and his eyes closed, breathing in the sawdust and the nothing-draft, feeling the concrete thrum against his palm like a second heartbeat.

No leads. No calls. No breaks in the case because there's no sightings, no signs of a break in, nothing. Eyes follow him around town, full of questions and suspicion. There's those who genuinely believe he did something to you. It's stupid, so fucking stupid. He's many thins, but he would never—

Except he did. He did hurt you. Just not in the way these people think.

So Bobby keeps coming because this room is the last place you were. And as long as he keeps sitting in it, as long as he keeps talking to the walls, you're not gone. 

You're just somewhere he hasn’t found you yet.

Month two.

The news spreads the way news does in a place like Santa Clara.

A slow seep through the neighbourhood, through the strip mall. The regulars who used to come to Clark's store for dining sets and bed frames and the occasional impulse-buy end table. A girl went missing. She worked there. The police questioned her boyfriend. No arrests, but you know.

People stop coming.

Not all at once. But the thin trickle becomes a drought. 

The regulars find reasons not to visit. Other stores, other errands, a sudden preference for the furniture place on Stevens Creek that doesn't have a missing-person case attached to it.

The showroom gets quieter. The displays gather a fine layer of dust that Clark used to wipe down every morning, and now he only gets to it every other day, then every third day, then whenever he remembers. Which is less and less because Clark is a man watching his business die and his marriage fracture. 

He can feel both things slipping through his fingers at the same speed, and the bourbon is the only thing that makes the slippage feel like someone else's problem.

So Clark hires Kat. 

Not because he needs a full-time replacement. Frankly, customer traffic no longer justifies it, but the showroom needs a body in it. A presence. Someone to make the store look like a place where things are still happening. Kat is bright and cheap, and she doesn't ask about the missing girl, at least not at first, and Clark is grateful for that.

Bobby notices her the first time he comes in for his nightly visit to the basement. 

She's behind the register, leaning against the counter with a pen behind her ear, doing something with a stack of delivery receipts. Radio plays something tuneful from a boombox she's brought from home. Dark hair. Quick smile. She looks up when the door chimes and gives him that particular once-over that Bobby used to live for. The slow sweep, the lingering, the way women's eyes always catch on the chain, the earring, the slice of toned stomach under the crop top. 

She says, “We're closed.”

“I know. I'm not shopping.”

She watches him walk past the display couches and the dining sets, then down the stairs, all with undisguised curiosity. Bobby doesn't turn around.

The second time, she asks.

“You're the boyfriend, right? Of the girl who—” She catches herself. Has the decency to look uncomfortable. “Sorry. Clark mentioned it.”

“Yeah.”

“I'm Kat,” she says. “I'm covering her shifts.”

“I know.”

Bobby keeps walking. Past the model bedrooms with their fake pillows and fake lamps, down the stairs, into the storage level where the real furniture waits in boxes. He sits on the floor. Presses his palm to the wall.

Hey baby. It's me again.

That night, back in the apartment, Bobby can't sleep. He lies on his side of the bed with his hand on your side and stares at the ceiling. The silence is so complete it has a texture, thick and too heavy. He gets up. Goes to the living room. Stands in front of the shelf where the cops put the tapes back, lined up in a neat row they were never in before.

He picks one up. Turns it over in his hands. The label is in his handwriting. A date, nothing else.

He tells himself he's looking for clues. That's the reason he gives himself as he threads the tape into the camera, plugs it into the TV, and sits on the floor with the remote in his hand.

The apartment is dark except for the blue wash of the screen. He's going to watch the footage with detective's eyes, with Moreno's eyes, looking for something everyone missed: a person in the background, a car that didn't belong, a moment where your face changed because you knew something was coming. He's going to be useful. He's going to be the kind of boyfriend who solves this.

And there you are. In the kitchen. In the morning light. Turning around with a spatula in your hand, your hair messy from sleep, one of his t-shirts hanging off your shoulder. You're saying something—he can't hear it over the lump in his throat, but he can read your lips, do you want toast—and the light is behind you, exactly the way he remembered. 

You're so beautiful, so real and so present on this tape that for a second Bobby forgets. For one perfect, idiot second, his body forgets you're gone and his hand almost lifts to touch the screen. 

Then the moment passes and you're still in the TV and he's still on the floor and the distance between those two things is the rest of his life.

He watches everything. All of it. Hours. The sleeping footage that made Moreno look at him like that. Bobby sees it now, sees what it looks like from the outside, and he also sees what it actually was: a man so stunned by the existence of this person in his bed that he needed the camera between them to survive it. 

You in the kitchen. You reading on the couch with your feet tucked under you, turning pages with one hand, the other hand resting on Bobby's thigh without thinking about it. He filmed that too, the hand, just the hand. Five minutes of your fingers against his jeans because he couldn't say you touching me is the best thing in my life, so Bobby recorded it instead. You at the store, sorting inventory, your lips moving along to the radio, and you catch the camera, and your face does that thing—the mock-exasperated smile, the Bobby, stop that you never really meant—and your eyes are warm. 

Your eyes are so fucking warm. Alive.

He watches until the tapes run out, and then Bobby rewinds them and watches again. He can't help it. The apartment fills with the sound of you. Your voice, your laugh, the particular way you said his name, Bobby, half-scolding and half-tender. For a few hours, the silence has a crack in it and something warm leaks through.

He starts watching them every night. Before the store, after the store, sometimes both. It becomes a ritual. Some sick twin devotions, the basement and the tapes, the wall and the screen, one hand pressed to concrete and the other pressing play.

Month three.

Kat starts leaving coffee on the counter for him. 

It's hot, and it's there every night when he walks in, balanced on the edge of the register next to a ceramic lamp that's been on display since before you vanished. 

She doesn't make a thing of it. Doesn't say I made this for you, or I thought you might want. It's just there. An object in his path. Bobby takes it because refusing would require a conversation he doesn't have the energy for.

She starts sitting on the stairs when he's in the basement. Not coming all the way down, just perching on the third step, legs crossed, chin in her hand, talking to him through the open stairwell. 

She tells him about her day. About the customers, mainly. The couple who spent three hours testing every sofa in the showroom and then bought a lamp, the woman who wanted to return a bed frame she'd clearly had for two years, and some guy who asked if they sold waterbeds. Clark apparently almost threw him out. She's funny, in a way that's different from you. Louder, broader, more direct. 

You were a scalpel. Kat's a blunt instrument, and right now Bobby is so hollowed out that even blunt force registers as contact.

He doesn't laugh. He doesn't encourage her. But he stops telling her to go away, and Kat reads that correctly as the only invitation Bobby knows how to extend right now.

It's the tapes that start to bother him first.

Not anything he can really name at first. It's more like a feeling. Particular unease of looking at something familiar and sensing, at the periphery, that it's shifted. He's watching the kitchen footage—the toast morning, his favourite, the one he's rewound so many times the tracking wobbles at the edges—and something feels off. Bobby stops the tape. Rewinds. Watches again.

You turn around with the spatula. The light is behind you. You say do you want toast. Everything is exactly the same.

Except your face.

Bobby leans closer to the screen. Squints. Your face is… fine. It's your face. Your eyes, your mouth, the way your hair falls. It's you. But there's… something. Some flicker of wrongness so faint it's less than a shadow. Like the difference between a photograph and a photocopy of a photograph. The information is all there. It's just one generation removed from real.

He tells himself it's the tape. Old footage, cheap equipment, the kind of VHS degradation that happens when you rewind the same section a hundred times. He tells himself it's his eyes, his exhaustion, the fact that he's watching the same clips at two in the morning in a dark apartment obsessively. 

His brain is doing what brains do when they're tired and desperate: finding patterns in the static.

He believes it. For a while. He presses play.

One night, Kat is quiet for longer than usual. Bobby can feel her watching him from the stairs, her chin on her knees, the stairwell light behind her making her silhouette sharp.

“You loved her a lot, huh,” she says. Soft. Not a question.

Bobby goes rigid. His hand is flat on the wall. The draft tickles against his palm.

He turns his head. Looks at her. And whatever's on his face, he knows it’s not warm. It's the Bobby that bites, the one who gets mean, and Kat sees it happen, feels the temperature drop. The wall goes up behind his expression like a bulkhead slamming shut.

“I still love her,” he says, cold and flat. Corrective. Present tense.

He turns back to the wall. Kat is quiet for a long time. Then she gets up and goes back upstairs, and Bobby hears her footsteps cross the showroom floor above him. He closes his eyes, pressing his forehead to the concrete. He hates himself for being cruel to one more person who didn't deserve it or ask him but did you do it?

But he can't— 

He can't let her use the past tense. He can't let anyone use the past tense. Because that means it's over, and it's not over. It's not. You're somewhere, he can feel it. 

Bobby is a man sitting on a concrete floor talking to nobody, and the only woman who ever mattered to him is gone, and the last thing he gave her was a fucking grunt.

He can't live in that version. He won't.

Month four.

Bobby starts going through the inventory records. 

Your handwriting is everywhere. The logs, the labels on the bins, the sticky notes on the shelving units, reminding Clark which shipments need to go out first. He sits in the storage level with the binder in his lap and traces your letters with his fingertip. He can hear your voice in the loops and slants. The way you wrote like you talked, quick and slightly messy, always abbreviating things so he had to ask you to translate.

The tapes are getting worse.

He can't deny it anymore. The wrongness he felt at month three has deepened into something visible, a decay he doesn't need to squint to see. 

Your face has lost something in the kitchen footage. Nothing he could point to, nothing a stranger who'd never met you would notice. But Bobby has watched this clip a thousand times, and he knows the terrain of your face the way a sailor knows coastline.

Something has shifted. 

Your eyes are the right colour, but the light behind them is dimmer, muted, like watching a candle through frosted glass. Your mouth moves and the words come out (do you want toast), but there's a fraction-of-a-second delay. The audio arriving just a breath after the lips, and it gives your voice a quality that makes the hair on Bobby's arms stand up. A dubbing. A sense that someone else is speaking through you, almost perfectly synchronised but not quite. 

He goes through the other tapes. One by one. Methodical. The sleeping footage first. And you're there, you're sleeping, but the quality of your stillness is wrong. Too still. A person breathing doesn't look like that, doesn't have that uncanny smoothness, that mannequin-serenity. 

The footage of you at the store next. Sorting inventory, lips moving to the radio is the worst affected so far. Your hands look right, but they move in a way that's almost, almost correct. The way a marionette's hands move when the puppeteer is very good. Bobby watches your fingers sort through drawer pulls and cabinet hardware, and he knows that those are not the hands that touched him.

He doesn't tell anyone. Who the hell would he even tell? Moreno? Hey, detective, the girl on my tapes is turning into something else? Yeah, same one that went missing and everyone thinks I secretly killed! His mom? Terrence? They already think he's losing it. Or, worse, they would think he’s high again.

They already use that voice with him now. The careful tone people use when they're managing a dangerous animal. This would be the thing that tips it, the thing that sends Bobby from grieving boyfriend to guy who cracked.

He starts making a list of his failures instead. 

An erosion in reverse. Every day, some new memory surfaces, a moment he discarded when it happened and now can't stop replaying. Each one is worse than the last because each one is a place where he had a choice and chose wrong and didn't even realise it. Or maybe he did. And that’s worse.

The night you came home excited about something—a movie, a book, something a friend said, he can't even remember what it was, and that fact alone makes him want to put his fist through drywall—and you'd been lit up, talking fast, gesturing, and he'd been reviewing footage on the couch.

He'd said uh-huh without looking up. Not even once. Not once during your entire story did he lift his eyes from the viewfinder. You trailed off mid-sentence and went quiet, and Bobby hadn't looked up then either.

He tries to find that moment on tape. He knows he was filming that night. The camera was always running, always capturing, the viewfinder his permanent excuse for not being present. He scrubs through the footage looking for it. Looking for your face lit up. Looking for the moment you dimmed.

He finds the timestamp. And what Bobby sees makes his stomach drop.

You're sitting on the couch. He can tell it's you by the posture, the clothes, the way you're tucked into the corner cushion with your legs folded. But your face. Your face is… smeared. Like a thumbprint pressed across wet paint. The features are there, technically. But only technically. Eyes, mouth, nose. But they've lost their arrangement, their specificity.

The uniqueness that makes a face your face instead of just a face. 

Bobby is looking at you, and he can’t tell what you look like. He’s lived with you, slept beside you, fucked you in every spot in your shared apartment, filmed you obsessively for months, and yet he’s looking at a tape from four months ago, and he can’t reconstruct you.

The audio is worse. Your voice—the one he knows better than his own, the one that said his name like a bell, half-scolding and half-tender—is distorted.

Vowels flattened, consonants dissolved. That familiar melody of your speech now reduced to a low warbling tone that doesn't sound like language anymore. It sounds like a recording of a recording of a recording. Each new generation losing fidelity, losing you, until what's left is just the shape of where a voice used to be.

Bobby ejects the tape. His hands are shaking so hard he almost drops it. He puts it back on the shelf and sits on the couch in the dark and doesn't move for an hour.

He sits with the inventory binder the next night and reads your handwriting and says to the wall:

Something's happening to you, baby. I can't—I don't know how to explain it. But something's happening to the tapes, and I think it means something's happening to you. I need you to hold on. Okay? I need you to hold on because I'm still here, and I'm not leaving. I need you to still be you when I find you.

I think I got scared of how much I needed you. So I stopped letting myself need you. And that's not an excuse. I know that's not an excuse.

The truth is, I wanted to be there so much that it was destroying me. I wanted you so much it made me fucking mean. I loved you in a way I couldn't control, and I've always been an idiot who quits everything. Who gives up when things get too big and scary. You were the one thing that made my hands shake, and I hated it, and I needed it. I needed you because you saw me. I didn't know how to need something without resenting it.

So I resented you. For making me believe in myself. For making me need something other than the weed. And I showed it by turning away and turning away and turning away until you thought I didn't feel anything at all, when the reality is I felt everything. I felt too much. I've always felt too much, and I've never once known what to do about it except hide behind the camera and make a dumb joke and let the moment pass.

He pauses. Slams the binder shut. Runs his hand over the cover where your coffee ring stains the cardboard.

I should've told you about the toast morning. The spatula. The light behind you. I should've put the camera down and told you right then.

I should've told you every morning.

Baby. I can still see your handwriting. I need to—I need that to mean you're still somewhere. That this is just the tapes. That the tapes are old and I'm tired and you're fine, wherever you are, you're fine and you look like you and you sound like you and when I find you I'll know your face.

Month five.

Kat touches his arm.

It happens on a Wednesday. She's handing him the coffee, and her fingers brush his wrist and stay there. A half-second too long. Warm. Intentional.

Bobby stares at her hand. Looks at her. She doesn't look away.

“You know,” she says cautiously, “you don't have to sit down there alone every night. You could stay up here. Sit on one of the display couches. They're actually pretty comfortable for fake living rooms.” She smiles. Not the interested once-over from the first night. Softer now, more careful.

Bobby takes the coffee. Goes downstairs.

His pager buzzes against his hip later that night. He unclips it, tilts it toward the light. Kat's number. She must've pulled it from the staff contact sheet Clark keeps.

He looks at the little green screen for a long time. Clips the pager back to his belt. Presses his forehead to the wall.

That night, at home, he puts in the toast tape. It's become a test now, a compulsion. He checks the way you'd check a wound, needing to see if it's gotten worse, even though looking makes it worse too. He sits on the floor in front of the TV and watches the kitchen footage load.

The spatula is there. The counter. The window with the morning light. The t-shirt hanging off one shoulder. Everything in the frame is crisp, real, and correctly rendered.

Except there's no one holding the spatula.

Bobby's breath hitches. He leans forward, hands shaking. Rewinds. Plays it again.

The spatula lifts. Turns. The t-shirt shifts on a shoulder that isn't there. Or is there, maybe, but wrong. A smudge of colour where a body should be, a heat-shimmer distortion where your outline used to sit. The light comes through the window and falls on the kitchen counter and on the empty space where you stood, and there is something in that space.

Not nothing, or blank tape, but a presence that has no edges, no features, no face. A blur. A smear. The visual equivalent of a word on the tip of your tongue that won't come.

The audio says — — toast — and then dissolves into a sound that Bobby can only describe as the noise a voice makes when it's being pulled apart from the inside. Each syllable stretches thinner and thinner until it snaps, and what's left is a low, sustained hum that sounds like buzzing lights in an empty hallway.

Bobby presses stop. Ejects the tape.

He goes to the shelf. Pulls another. The one where you're reading on the couch, your hand on his thigh. He puts it in.

Your hand is gone. His thigh is there. Bobby can see his own jeans, the denim folded at the knee. That specific wear pattern on the left leg. But the hand that used to rest on it has dissolved into a faded wash, a blurry disturbance on the surface of the image, like someone pressed their palm to a fogged window and then the fog closed over the print.

He puts in another. The store footage. You sorting inventory.

The bins are being sorted by no one. Cabinet hardware moves through the air. Drawer pulls lift and settle into containers by themselves, organised by a system invented by a person the tape can no longer render. The radio plays in the recording. Bobby can hear the music. Unchanged. But the voice that used to sing along to it is gone. Replaced by a low, pulsing tone that rises and falls in a pattern that almost, almost resembles the melody you used to hum, if he listens hard enough, if Bobby presses his ear to the speaker and closes his eyes and believes—

He can't. He can't believe it hard enough. The tape runs, and the inventory sorts itself. The radio plays somewhere underneath it all in a frequency that used to be your voice.

Bobby puts every tape in, one by one. Every single one. And on every single one, you’re fading. The early tapes—the oldest ones, the ones from before the store, from the first months—are the worst. 

On those, you’re gone entirely. The frame exists, as does the light. But the space you occupied is smooth and empty, the image healing the wound of your absence like skin closing over a wound.

Reality itself seems to be deciding you were never there and quietly, methodically, is editing you out.

On the very last tape he checks, the most recent, he can still see you. Barely. A silhouette that won't resolve. A shape in the doorway that could be a person or could be a trick of the light. He pauses the tape and stares at the shape, and it looks like you the way a cloud looks like a face. If you want it to, if you squint hard enough and ignore the parts that don't match.

Bobby sits on the floor, holding the remote, staring at the paused frame. He understands, with a certainty that bypasses logic and settles directly into his bones, that you’re being erased. Not just from his life. Not just from the apartment, the store, or the neighbourhood that forgot you. From reality. From any evidence that you existed at all.

The tapes were his proof. Not for Moreno, or the cops, but for himself. Proof that you were real. That the toast morning happened. That your hand rested on his thigh. Love, in all its messy, imperfect shape between you, was real. That you sang along to the radio and burned rolls at Thanksgiving. That you stood in doorways waiting for him to look up. For once in his life, to just look up and see you. 

He filmed you because he couldn't tell you he loved you, and thought the films would be enough. They were going to be the evidence he'd have forever, the record of what he felt even when he couldn't say it aloud.

And now even that’s being taken.

He doesn't go to the store that night. He goes straight to the basement and puts his whole body against the wall. Not just his hand. His whole body, chest, cheek and palms flat against the concrete. Maybe he’s going insane, finally, properly insane, but he talks until his voice gives out.

Don't go. Whatever's happening, whatever this is—please. Don't go. I know I didn't earn you. I know I don't get to ask you to stay when I didn't give you a reason to stay. But I’m asking. I'm begging. Please.

I can barely remember your face, baby.

I looked at the tapes, and you're not—you're going away. You're going away, and I can't stop it. The last version of your face I have in my head is from the doorway, the night you left, and I didn't even LOOK at it. I fucking grunted. You were looking at me, and I was looking at the TV. Now your face is disappearing from my own tapes, and the last real look I had at you I wasted on a GRUNT.

Baby. Please don't make me forget what you look like.

The wall breathes against him. The draft. The nowhere-breeze, cooler than the room, steady, almost rhythmic. Like breathing. Like something on the other side pressing back, watching him.

Bobby lifts his head but he's alone down here.

He stays until morning anyway.

Month six.

The apartment is starting to forget you.

Your shampoo ran out first. Bobby couldn't bring himself to buy more, so the shower shelf has a gap now.

Your magazines are buried under his mail, his camera equipment that's migrated back to every flat surface because there's nobody to complain about it. The coffee mug—your mug, the one on the drying rack—he put it in the cabinet. High shelf. Behind his. He can't see it when he opens the door, but he knows it's there. 

The tapes are blank.

Completely blank. Clean, smooth, unrecorded type of blank. As if the camera was never pointed at anything, as if the record button was never pressed. Hours and hours of footage simply un-happened. 

Bobby put in the toast tape last week, and what played was thirty minutes of soft grey nothing. The gentle hiss of virgin magnetic tape, the sound of a medium that has never held information. He put it in the camera, connected it to the TV, and watched nothing. Rewound it. Watched nothing again, ejected it, held it in his hands, turned it over and read his own handwriting on the label. 

The date, just the date. The label is the only proof left that something was once on this tape, because the tape itself has forgotten.

All of them. Every single one. He checked them all, one after another, on a Saturday afternoon with the curtains drawn. By the time Bobby reached the last one, he wasn't even surprised. Just hollow. The shelves are full of labelled cassettes that now contain nothing.

A library of blanks. An archive of absence.

He has no pictures of you. 

He realises this with a physical lurch, sitting on the floor surrounded by dead tapes. He has no pictures of you. 

Bobby the camera guy, Bobby who filmed everything, Bobby who pointed the lens at you while you slept because he couldn't survive the sight of you without a barrier, and somehow, he has no proof you exist. The tapes are blank. He never took photographs because the camera was always rolling. And the only image of your face he has left is the one in his head, and that one is fading too. 

Just the ordinary human erosion. The way memory smooths out detail over time. Six months of absence turns a face into an impression, an atmosphere, a feeling-where-a-face-used-to-be.

He remembers your eyes. He thinks. He remembers warmth, colour, the way they changed in kitchen light, and the blue wash of the TV at midnight. But he doesn't remember their exact shape. Doesn't remember if the left one was slightly different from the right. 

The details are blurry; the tapes can't tell him anymore, and no one else can, either. You’re being unmade—from the record, from the world, from his own goddamn memory—and Bobby is the man who was supposed to preserve you, who pointed a camera at you for years, and he couldn't even do that right.

He still goes to the store. Every night. Without fail. 

Even when it rains, or when he's sick, or when his hands shake on the steering wheel, driving down at eleven PM. He sits on the floor, and he talks. Sometimes he brings the coffee, your order, and a paper cup from the place on El Camino that makes it the way you like best.

Bobby sets it on the concrete beside him like a place setting at a table for two, and it goes cold while he talks. Eventually, he pours it out in the utility sink by the loading dock, rinses the cup and drives home.

It's getting harder to believe.

He can feel it. 

Faith eroding the way your shampoo scent eroded from the pillow, the way you eroded from the tapes, gradually, then suddenly. Six months. People don't come back after six months. The cops have functionally closed the case. 

Bobby's mom called and talked around the subject for forty minutes before finally saying honey, maybe it's time to— and Bobby hung up on her. His buddy Terrence sat him down at a bar and said, awkwardly, carefully, the way everyone talks to Bobby now, man, I know you don't want to hear this, but— and Bobby walked out before he could finish the sentence.

He knows what they're going to say. He knows because he's been saying it to himself at three in the morning, lying on his side of the bed with his hand on the cold spot you should be, a thought looping in his brain: she's not coming back. She's not coming back.

But Bobby goes to the store. And he sits on the floor. He puts his hand on the wall. The draft is still there—that impossible nowhere-breeze, cool against his palm—and it feels like breathing. Bobby presses his whole body against the concrete.

This space is the last thing that still holds you. The tapes gave you up. The apartment gave you up. The neighbourhood, the cops, his friends, his mother, everyone has let go. Bobby presses himself against the wall every night because this is the one place in the world that still has you in it. The last surface that carries your imprint, and he’ll not leave it. 

He will not let the last proof of you go.

Bobby thinks about who he was seven months ago, and the contempt is so total it's almost cleansing. 

A twenty-something-year-old asshole in a crop top who thought he was too cool to say I love you, who hid behind a camera lens because looking at things through glass was easier than looking at them with his bare, stupid, cowardly eyes.

He had a girl who made him breakfast and stayed up waiting for him. Who asked do you even want to be here anymore and answered her with don't be dramatic because the truth was too enormous and too terrifying to fit through his teeth.

The camera was supposed to be the thing that kept you. The proof, the record, the insurance policy against loss. He filmed you because he couldn't hold you, and now the film is empty. His arms are empty too, and the only thing left is a dusty basement with a strange wall and a man who doesn't deserve the comfort of it.

Robert Franklin, who quit everything, who let every good thing in his life rot through neglect and cowardice—Robert Franklin refuses to quit this. 

This is the one thing he will hold onto with both hands. Because if he lets go, he has to look at who he is without it, and that person has nothing. That someone is an idiot with a camera and a crop top sitting in an empty apartment full of blank tapes, where he ground something beautiful down to dust because he was too chickenshit to be soft.

So he goes. Every night. He goes.

Month seven.

Clark is drunk.

Bobby can tell before he's through the door. 

The showroom lights are on, but the sign is flipped to CLOSED, and the radio's playing louder than usual from somewhere in the back. When Bobby makes his way past the dining displays, he finds Clark sitting in the leather recliner. The expensive floor model, the one that's been here since the store opened, with a bottle of Jim Beam wedged between his thigh and that look on his face. 

The one Bobby sees in the mirror. The look of a man whose life is falling apart.

“Bobby.” Flat. Not unfriendly. Voice of a man who's been drinking past sloppy and into something cold and brittle on the other side. “Right on time.”

“Clark.” Bobby eyes the bottle. “Where's Kat?”

“Sent her home early.” Clark takes a long, gulping drink. He's still wearing his work shirt, that same button-down he always wears, but it's untucked and the collar's stained. He looks like he's been in that recliner for a while. “Sit down.”

“I'm going downstairs.”

“No.” Another wet gulp. His eyes are red but steady. “You're not. That's what I need to talk to you about.”

Bobby stops.

“Linda kicked me out,” Clark says conversationally. The way he'd talk about lumber prices or a late shipment. He gestures around the showroom with the bottle. “So I'll be staying here. Back office. Maybe downstairs, if I can clear space between the Scandinavian imports.” The joke almost lands. Almost. “Which means I need the room, Bobby. All of it.”

“You're—what?”

“I'm saying you can't come here anymore.”

The words land like a slap. Bobby's hand tightens on the strap of his camera bag.

“Clark—”

“Seven months.” 

And there it is. That thing that happens when Clark drinks, when the bourbon strips away the politeness and the it's not my place and the careful middle-aged-man diplomacy, and what's left is just the raw compressed anger of a man who's been swallowing his own resentment for months.

Clark is a man who holds everything down until the whiskey lifts the lid and whatever's underneath comes out scalding.

“Seven months of you in my basement. Seven months of—do you know what's happened to this place since your girlfriend disappeared? Do you? Because I do. I watch it every day. I watch the customers not come in. I watch the phone not ring. I watch the neighbourhood look at my store like it's a goddamn crime scene and take their money to Stevens Creek because nobody wants to buy a dining set from the place where a girl vanished.” Clark's voice is rising, a deep rumbling anger spilling outwards. “I built this store. And now I'm sleeping in it because my ungrateful wife thinks I'm a failure and my customers think I'm cursed and the only person who walks through my door every night is you, Bobby, sitting on my floor, talking to my wall—”

“That's not my fault —”

“She's not down there.” Clark slams the bottle on the end table. It cracks the mahogany finish, and he doesn't notice or doesn't care. “She's not in the walls, or the ceiling or the goddamn floor, son. She's not inside a goddamn flatpack bookshelf.”

Bobby sucks in a breath. “You don't know that. Nobody does.”

“Yeah, I do.” 

Clark leans forward. Red-eyed. Steady. And the thing he's been holding between his teeth for months comes out. The ugly thing that isn't about Bobby at all, it's about Clark, about a store that was failing before you ever disappeared and a marriage that was cracking before the customers stopped coming.

A man who needs someone to blame because the alternative is looking in the mirror and seeing his own fingerprints on everything that's broken. And right now, tonight, drunk and newly homeless and sitting in a recliner in a showroom full of furniture nobody's buying, Clark has found his someone.

“She's either dead,” Clark says, and the word just hangs there, settling on Bobby's skin like hot oil spilling over— “or she left you. And either way, son. Either way. You need to stop. Because I can't have you down there anymore. I can't have this—this haunting—attached to my store. I'm trying to save what's left, and you sitting in my basement every night is—”

He stops himself. A crack appears in Clark’s anger, a fissure where the sober Clark underneath can see what the drunk Clark is doing. Using Bobby's grief to deflect from his own failure. Blaming a missing girl for a business that was haemorrhaging money long before she vanished, for a wife who kicked him out because Clark worked sixty-hour weeks and never once asked how her day was.

Clark knows. Underneath the bourbon, he knows. And the knowing makes his face twist with both sadness and fury.

“Bobby.” His voice changes. Drops. The anger drains out of it like water from a cracked glass, leaving only the exhaustion underneath. Clark rubs his eyes with one hand, and suddenly, he looks old. Older than he is, tired in a way that has nothing to do with the hour. “I didn't—that came out wrong. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it like that.”

Bobby doesn't hear him.

Because Bobby is already moving. Past the display couches and the model bedrooms with their fake pillows and fake lives. He shoulder clips the corner of a dining table hard enough to shift it on the showroom floor, and the door chimes behind him when he rips it open.

The night air hits him, and he's in the parking lot, his hands are on his knees, and he's breathing in short, ragged, tearing bursts that feel like they're coming from somewhere below his lungs. 

Somewhere that's been sealed shut for seven months and has just been cracked open with the words she's either dead or she left you.

Dead or she left you.

Dead.

Or she left you.

He can't fucking breathe. He can't—the air is right there. Santa Clara night air, warm and full of eucalyptus and car exhaust, but he can't get it into his lungs. Because Clark said dead, and that word is a door Bobby has refused to open for seven months, and now it's open, it's wide fucking open. 

And behind it is a version of reality where you’re in the ground somewhere and the last thing he ever said to you was a grunt and your last memory of him is the back of his head and the blue light of the television and the sound of a man who couldn't be bothered to look up.

And the tapes are blank. And your face is gone. And there is no record anywhere in the world that you existed except the label on a cassette in Bobby's handwriting and in a basement he's just been locked out of.

“Bobby. Bobby, wait—”

Kat. Coming around the side of the building, car keys in her hand. She didn't go home. She was sitting in her car, headlights off, engine off, just sitting there, and she's been doing that, he knows she's been doing that, waiting for him, watching the door. And he's never said anything because acknowledging it would mean acknowledging everything it implies.

“Bobby, hey, stop, are you okay? I heard him through the door, what did he—”

Bobby straightens up. Pivots toward her. And he knows—somewhere in the functioning part of his brain, in the part that isn't currently on fire—that she doesn't deserve what’s coming. She's been nothing but kind.

Coffee on counters, stairs and parking lots and pager numbers he never called back. She never once asked for anything in return. She’s a good person standing in a parking lot trying to help a man who’s bleeding out from a wound she didn't inflict.

But the thing inside Bobby right now is not rational. It's not kind. It's the wounded animal, the cornered dog, the part of Robert Franklin that has always turned his pain into teeth and aimed them at whoever's closest because the alternative is feeling it. And he…

He can't feel it; if he feels it right now, he’ll come apart on this asphalt, and he doesn't know if he'll come back together again.

“Don't do that. Don't chase me. Don't wait in the parking lot. Don't leave me coffee. Don't—” His voice cracks, and he hates it. Hates the sound of himself breaking in front of her. Another woman who's being kind to him, and he's going to ruin it with his inability to do anything with tenderness except flinch from it. “I'm not going to fuck you, Kat. Alright? Is that what you need to hear? My girl is missing. The girl I love is fucking missing, and I don't know where she is, and I can't—I can't do this. Whatever you think this is going to become. I can't.”

He presses the heel of his hand into his eye. Hard. Grinding the tears back because Bobby doesn't cry in front of people. Even though he's been doing it alone on concrete for seven months, even though the irony—Bobby Franklin pushing away the person trying to be there for him while grieving the person he pushed away by not being there—is so perfect and so cruel it feels engineered. Like the universe is holding up a mirror and saying see? You're doing it again. You learned nothing, idiot.

He knows. He knows he's doing it again. He can't stop doing it.

“I can't,” he rasps. Quiet, broken. “I'm sorry.”

Kat stands still. Her keys dangle from one finger, catching the orange glow of the streetlight. She doesn't step back. Doesn't cry or get angry or tell him to go fuck himself, though she definitely should. Bobby almost wishes she would because it would give him someone to push against.

The tapes are blank, and your face is a smear. Reality is closing over the hole you left like water closing over a stone, and soon there’ll be no evidence you were ever here at all except a man in a parking lot who can't stop saying your name in the present tense.

Kat shifts her keys to her other hand. Takes one step closer. Not touching. Just closer.

She looks at him, and she says, quietly, softly, “I don't need you to love me, Bobby.”

Quiet. Simple. Like she's telling him the time.

Bobby's mouth opens. Closes. His hand drops from his face. The parking lot is quiet. Only the buzzing streetlight fills the silence. 

He looks at her, and he looks wrecked, he knows. Absolutely wrecked, hollowed out and scraped clean from last seven months, standing in a place where the only options are forward into something he's not ready for or backwards into a basement he's just been locked out of, and he doesn't say yes.

But he doesn't walk away, either.

“Yes.”

He blinked. “You haven’t heard the rest of it. The human me won’t know you. Won’t remember anything about our travels, about who I was, about any of it. You’ll have to start from scratch. You’ll have to lie, every day, to someone wearing my face. And it could be years. Decades, even, before it’s safe.”

“I said yes.” Your voice was steadier than you felt. “Tell me what I need to do.”

He stared at you for a long moment, something raw and unreadable flickering in his gaze. Then he pulled you into a crushing hug, his face buried in your hair.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

You held on tight, memorizing the feel of him, the lean strength of his frame, the double beat of his hearts against your chest, the faint scent of ozone and tea that clung to his suit. You didn’t know if you’d ever feel it again.

When he pulled back, his eyes were suspiciously bright. “Right. No time to waste. There’s a few things you need.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his sonic screwdriver, pressing it into your palm. Your fingers closed around the cool metal automatically.

“Keep this safe,” he said. “It won’t work for the human me, well, it might, if he’s clever enough, but he won’t know what it is. You’ll need it if…when the time comes. And this.”

From another pocket, he produced a simple silver fob watch, unadorned except for delicate circular Gallifreyan script etched into the casing. It felt warm in your hand, almost alive, pulsing with a faint rhythm that matched the Doctor’s hearts.

“My essence. My memories. Everything I am.” His voice was carefully controlled, but you could hear the terror underneath. “When the process is complete, I’ll just be a man. An ordinary man with an ordinary life. The TARDIS will create false memories, a background, a history. She’ll choose somewhere safe, somewhere quiet, somewhere no one would ever think to look for a Time Lord.”

“Where?”

He smiled, properly this time, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Knowing her? Somewhere spectacularly boring.”

The TARDIS materialized in a narrow alley between a bookshop and a bakery, the scent of fresh bread and old paper wafting through the doors when you opened them. Outside, a typical English street stretched in either direction, all red brick and gray sky, bicycles chained to lampposts and a postbox on the corner.

The Doctor, no, not the Doctor anymore, not really, stepped out beside you, blinking in the watery sunlight. One moment he’d been standing at the TARDIS console, the fob watch open in his hand, golden light pouring from his eyes and mouth. The next, he’d crumpled to the floor, and when he woke, the watch was closed, and the man looking up at you had only confusion in his brown eyes.

“Where am I?” he’d asked, and your heart had broken clean in two.

Now, standing in the alley with a bewildered expression on his face, he looked so ordinary it hurt. The same sharp features, the same lanky frame, the same ridiculous hair, but the weight was gone. The centuries of grief and guilt and impossible knowledge that had always lurked behind his smile had vanished, leaving behind something lighter.

“I think I’m supposed to be here,” he said slowly, patting his pockets. He pulled out a wallet, flipping through it with growing confusion. “John Smith. That’s my name. I’m…I’m a librarian? Apparently I have a job interview at the local library this afternoon.”

“That’s nice,” you managed, your voice coming out strangled.

He looked at you properly then, and something shifted in his expression. The confusion didn’t exactly fade, but it was joined by something else. Recognition, almost. Like he was trying to place you and couldn’t quite manage it, but knew, somehow, that you were important.

“I’m sorry,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck in a gesture so achingly familiar that you had to look away. “This is going to sound mad, but…do I know you?”

Your fingers tightened around the sonic screwdriver in your coat pocket. The fob watch was nestled beside it. “Not exactly. We’re…I’m new in town too.”

“Oh.” He smiled then, a shy, tentative thing that was nothing like the Doctor’s manic grins, and your heart did something complicated in your chest. “Well, that’s a coincidence. Or maybe not. I can’t really remember how I got here, to be honest. Everything’s a bit fuzzy.”

“You hit your head,” you said, the lie sliding off your tongue with practiced ease. You’d rehearsed it with the Doctor before the transformation. “On the train. Concussion, the doctors said. You might have some memory issues for a while.”

“Right. Right, that makes sense.” He nodded, seemingly satisfied with the explanation. Then his gaze drifted back to you, and that strange, searching look returned. “I don’t suppose you’d want to…I mean, I know we’ve just met, technically, but I feel like…” He trailed off, flushing slightly. “This is going to sound completely insane, but I feel like I know you. Like I’m supposed to know you. Is that mad?”

“No,” you said quietly. “It’s not mad at all.”

The first year was the hardest because of the sheer, grinding normality of it all.

John Smith got the librarian job. He rented a small flat, all creaky floorboards and windows and a tiny kitchen that always smelled faintly of cabbage. He bought secondhand furniture and started wearing cardigans and joined a local book club that met every Thursday evening in the back room of the local pub.

And you, tasked with keeping him safe, had to build a life beside him.

You found a job at the bakery next to the alley where the TARDIS still sat, hidden behind a perception filter that made it look like an old police box that had been decommissioned years ago. You rented a flat of your own, two streets over, and learned to bake sourdough and make small talk with customers and pretend that you weren’t a time-traveling companion of a centuries-old alien who was now shelving books and recommending Agatha Christie novels to pensioners.

It should have been unbearable. It was, in many ways. But there were also moments that caught you off guard, moments that made the lie feel almost worth it.

Like the first time John asked you to dinner.

“It’s not a date,” he’d said quickly, his ears going pink in a way the Doctor’s never had. “I mean, unless you want it to be. Which you probably don’t. We’ve only known each other a few weeks. But I was going to make pasta, and I always make too much, and you mentioned you don’t cook much, and I thought...”

“John.” You’d touched his arm to stop the ramble, and he’d gone very still under your hand. “I’d love to have dinner with you.”

The smile that broke across his face was like sunrise.

It was nothing like the Doctor’s smiles, which always held a hint of darkness, of secrets, of the terrible knowledge of all the things he’d seen and done. John Smith’s smile was just a smile, and somehow that made it devastating in an entirely different way.

Dinner was pasta with a slightly burnt sauce and cheap wine from the corner shop and conversation that meandered through books and music and childhood memories that had been fabricated by the TARDIS but felt real enough to John that he told them with genuine fondness. He asked about your life, and you spun half-truths from the fragments you could safely share, and when you left that night with a container of leftovers and a warmth in your chest that had nothing to do with the wine, you knew you were in trouble.

He asked you out properly a week later. A film at the little independent cinema two towns over. Then dinner again. Then a walk along the river, where he’d reached for your hand like it was the most natural thing in the world and held it like he was afraid you might disappear.

“I know this is fast,” he’d said, his thumb tracing circles on your knuckles. “And I know I’m not…I mean, I’m just a librarian. I’m not exciting or adventurous or anything particularly special. But being with you feels right. It feels like the most right thing in the world. Does that make sense?”

You’d looked at him, at this gentle, earnest, utterly human man who wore the Doctor’s face and spoke with the Doctor’s voice but held none of the Doctor’s impossible weight, and felt your heart splinter into a thousand pieces.

“It makes perfect sense,” you’d whispered, and when he kissed you, soft and sweet and trembling slightly, you let yourself pretend, just for a moment, that this could last.

The second year was easier. Routine set in like weather, predictable and comforting. You saw John nearly every day: lunch at the bakery, dinner at his flat or yours, weekends spent exploring the countryside or curled up on his sofa reading books he’d brought home from the library. He’d read passages aloud to you, doing voices for the characters, and you’d laugh until your sides hurt, and then he’d look at you with such open adoration that you’d have to excuse yourself to the bathroom to pull yourself together.

The TARDIS sat in its alley, untouched. You visited it sometimes, late at night when you couldn’t sleep, running your fingers over the weathered blue wood and feeling the faint hum of life still pulsing within. The fob watch you kept in a locked box under your bed, wrapped in velvet, its warmth a constant reminder of what you were guarding. Of who you were waiting for.

Some nights you took it out and held it in your palm, watching the Gallifreyan script gleam in the darkness, and wondered if the Doctor was still in there. If he could feel the passage of time. If he knew what you were doing, what you were becoming to the man he’d made himself into.

Some nights, lying in John’s arms while he slept peacefully beside you, his single heart beating steady and slow against your back, you wondered if you even wanted the Doctor to come back at all.

Because John Smith was good. John Smith was kind. John Smith brought you tea in bed and remembered how you liked your toast and left little notes in library books he thought you’d enjoy. He had nightmares sometimes: fragments of the Time War bleeding through in dreams he couldn’t understand, images of fire and screaming and a red desert under an orange sky, and you’d hold him until he stopped shaking, murmuring nonsense reassurances until he drifted back to sleep.

“I feel like there’s something I’ve forgotten,” he told you once, in the gray light of early morning. “Something important. Something terrible.” His brow furrowed, and for just a moment, he looked so much like the Doctor that your breath caught. “Does that sound mad?”

“No,” you said, your voice steady despite the ache in your chest. “Everyone has things they’d rather forget.”

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he turned to you, propping himself up on one elbow, his expression soft and searching. “Whatever it is, I don’t think I want to remember it. I like this. I like my life. I like…” He trailed off, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. “I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

You’d known it was coming. You’d seen it building for months, in every look and touch and unguarded moment. But hearing it aloud, in his quiet, earnest voice, still hit you like a physical blow.

“I know,” you whispered.

“You don’t have to say it back. I just wanted you to know.” He smiled, that gentle, uncomplicated smile that still undid you every time. “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.”

You didn’t say it back. Not then. You kissed him instead, pouring everything you couldn’t say into the press of your lips against his, and when he pulled you closer with a surprised, pleased sound, you let yourself fall into the warmth of him and tried very, very hard not to think about the fob watch ticking away under your bed.

But eventually, you said it. Of course you did. You’d loved the Doctor for years, silently, hopelessly, watching him flirt and charm his way across the universe while you stood in his shadow. Loving John Smith was different, easier in some ways, impossibly harder in others, but it was still love. Still real, still yours.

And he was so happy when you finally said the words. So incandescently, transparently joyful that you almost, almost convinced yourself it could be enough.

The proposal came at the end of the second year.

It wasn’t grand or dramatic. John wasn’t grand or dramatic. He took you to the riverbank where you’d first held hands, spread out a blanket, and produced a picnic basket filled with slightly lopsided sandwiches and a bottle of wine that was far nicer than anything he usually bought.

“What’s the occasion?” you asked, amused.

“Do I need an occasion?” But his ears had gone pink again, and he was fidgeting with the edge of the blanket in a way that made your heart stutter.

Halfway through the meal, he set down his sandwich, took a deep breath, and turned to face you fully. His brown eyes were bright with nerves and hope and something that looked terrifyingly like certainty.

“I know we’ve only known each other a couple of years,” he said, his voice slightly unsteady. “And I know I’m not…I mean, I don’t have much to offer. I’m a librarian. My furniture is secondhand and my cooking is mediocre at best.” He let out a shaky laugh. “I’m not exactly a catch.”

“John...”

“Let me finish, please, or I’ll lose my nerve.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small velvet box. “The thing is, every good thing in my life, every happy moment I can remember, has you in it. You’re the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about before I fall asleep. And I know it’s fast, and I know it’s probably mad, but I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to waste a single moment we could have together.”

He opened the box. Inside was a simple silver ring, set with a small, glittering stone that caught the afternoon light and scattered it into rainbows.

“Will you marry me?”

The world stopped.

For one long, crystalline moment, you let yourself imagine it. Saying yes. Marrying him. Building a life in this sleepy little town, growing old together, surrounded by books and bad cooking and the quiet, steady love he offered so freely. You could do it. You could lock the fob watch away forever, let the Doctor sleep for the rest of John Smith’s mortal life, and take this happiness for yourself.

It would be so easy. So terribly, temptingly easy.

But even as the fantasy bloomed in your mind, you felt the weight of the sonic screwdriver in your bag, the ghost of the fob watch’s warmth against your skin. You remembered the Doctor’s face, grave and trusting, as he handed you his entire existence. You remembered the aliens, still out there, still hunting. And you remembered that this man, this sweet, gentle, ordinary man, wasn’t yours to keep.

“John.” Your voice came out cracked, barely a whisper. “I can’t. Not yet.”

The hope in his eyes flickered, but didn’t go out. “Is it too soon? I know it’s only been two years...”

“It’s not that.” You reached out, cupping his face in your hands, memorizing the lines of him. “I love you. I love you so much it terrifies me. But there are things…things about my past, things I haven’t told you…”

“I don’t care about your past,” he said fiercely. “Whatever it is, whatever you’ve done or been through, it doesn’t matter to me.”

“It matters to me.” You stroked your thumb across his cheekbone, feeling the faint stubble, the warmth of his skin. “Just…give me time. Ask me again. Not now, but someday. Ask me again.”

He searched your face for a long moment, and you saw the exact instant he decided to trust you. It was in the softening of his jaw, the release of tension in his shoulders, the way his hand came up to cover yours.

“Alright,” he said quietly. “I’ll wait. As long as you need. I’m not going anywhere.”

He tucked the ring box back into his pocket and pulled you into a kiss instead, and you let yourself melt into him, hating yourself just a little for the tears that slipped down your cheeks. He mistook them for happiness, or maybe just emotion, and kissed them away with a tenderness that made your heart feel like it was being wrung out like a dishcloth.

That night, alone in your flat, you took out the fob watch and held it in your trembling hands.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered to it. To him. To both of them. “I’m so sorry.”

The watch said nothing. It just kept ticking, marking out the seconds of a borrowed life, waiting for the moment it would all come crashing down.

The moment came on an ordinary Tuesday in spring.

You were closing up the bakery, wiping down the counters and trying to decide what to make for dinner, when the bell above the door chimed. You looked up with your customer-service smile already in place, and felt the blood freeze in your veins.

Three people had entered. They looked human, two men and a woman, all dressed in unremarkable clothing, all wearing pleasant, unremarkable expressions. But their eyes were wrong. Flat. Cold. Empty of anything resembling genuine emotion.

And they moved wrong, too. Too smoothly. Too precisely. Like puppets being operated by someone who hadn’t quite mastered the strings.

“We’re closed,” you said, your voice remarkably steady given the terror clawing at your throat.

The woman smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes. “We’re not here for baked goods.”

“We’re looking for someone,” one of the men added. His head tilted at an angle that was just slightly too sharp to be natural. “A very particular someone. We’ve been searching for a very long time.”

“Sorry.” You gripped the edge of the counter, your knuckles going white. “Can’t help you.”

“Oh, we think you can.” The woman took a step forward, and you caught a flicker of something beneath her skin, a ripple of wrongness, like something was moving underneath the surface. “You see, we can’t find our quarry. We’ve searched every corner of this galaxy, every dimension, every timeline. And then it occurred to us, perhaps our quarry isn’t our quarry anymore. Perhaps he’s become something else. Something…human.”

Your heart was pounding so hard you could barely hear them over the rush of blood in your ears. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you?” The second man spoke this time, his voice a flat monotone. “You’ve been here two years. You arrived at precisely the same time our quarry disappeared. And you spend an extraordinary amount of time with a man who, according to all records, didn’t exist until that exact moment.”

“Coincidence,” you managed.

“There are no coincidences.” The woman’s smile widened, “Not where the Doctor is concerned.”

They knew. They knew, and they’d found you, and John was probably at the library right now, shelving books and humming to himself, utterly unaware that death had come to his quiet little town wearing human skin.

“We’ll find him eventually,” the woman continued, as if reading your thoughts. “We can sense him, faintly. The trace of what he was, buried deep. It’s only a matter of time. But it would be so much easier if you simply told us where he is.”

“Never.”

The word tore out of you before you could stop it, and the woman’s expression flickered into something that might have been satisfaction.

“Loyal,” she observed. “Touching. But loyalty can be…painful.”

You stumbled backward, reaching blindly for anything you could use as a weapon, and your hand closed around the handle of a rolling pin.

“I wouldn’t,” said the woman, almost gently. “It won’t do you any good.”

“Maybe not.” You lifted your chin, meeting her flat, dead eyes with as much defiance as you could muster. “But I’ll make sure it hurts.”

For a long, suspended moment, no one moved. Then the woman laughed.

“We’re not going to kill you,” she said. “Not yet. You’re going to bring him to us. Tomorrow, sunset, at the old church on the hill. Make sure he hands us his essence of immortality. If you don’t… well.” She smiled again. “This town is full of fragile little humans. It would be a shame if something happened to them.”

She turned and walked out, the two men following in perfect synchronization. The bell chimed cheerfully as the door swung shut behind them, and you stood there in the empty bakery, clutching a rolling pin and shaking so hard you could barely stand.

You didn’t go home that night. You went straight to the TARDIS.

The old police box was still there. You pressed your palm against the wood and tried to think.

They’d found you, and they’d find John sooner or later, and when they did, they would tear him apart. There was no running this time. No clever escape. The only option was the one you’d been dreading for two years.

You had to bring the Doctor back.

The fob watch was in your bag, along with the sonic screwdriver. Now you pulled out the watch and held it in your palm, watching the Gallifreyan script pulse with soft golden light.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, for what felt like the hundredth time. “I’m so sorry, John.”

Then you squared your shoulders, wiped your eyes, and went to find the man you loved to destroy him.

John was at his flat, as you’d known he would be. He opened the door with a smile that faltered the moment he saw your face.

“What’s wrong?” He pulled you inside immediately, his hands gentle on your shoulders. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Come in, sit down, I’ll make tea...”

“John.” You caught his hands, holding them still. “We need to talk.”

He went very still. “That’s never a good sentence.”

“Please. Just…come with me. There’s something I need to show you.”

You led him through the darkening streets to the alley where the TARDIS stood.

“What is that?” He stared at the blue box, his brow furrowing in confusion that was rapidly becoming distress. “I’ve walked past this alley a hundred times, I’ve never seen…why have I never seen…?”

“Because you weren’t supposed to.” You pulled out the sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the TARDIS doors, which swung open with a familiar wheezing groan. “Come inside.”

He followed you in a daze, his eyes darting around the impossibly large interior. The central column glowed softly, a slow, sleepy pulse that spoke of deep hibernation. The Doctor had programmed the TARDIS to maintain basic functions but nothing more, keeping her hidden and dormant until she was needed again.

“This is…” John turned in a slow circle, his face a mask of bewilderment. “This isn’t possible. This is…”

“It’s a spaceship,” you said quietly. “It’s also a time machine. And it belongs to you.”

He laughed incredulously. “That’s mad. That’s completely mad. I’m a librarian. I’ve never even been on a plane.”

“You’re not a librarian.” The words tasted like ashes in your mouth. “You’re not even human. Not really.”

And you told him. Everything. The Doctor, the transformation, the two years of lies. You spoke until your voice went hoarse, and through it all, John stood motionless, his face slowly draining of colour.

When you finished, he was silent for a long moment. Then he whispered, “You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

“This isn’t a joke, or a prank, or…or some kind of nervous breakdown?”

“No.”

He turned away from you, his shoulders hunched, his hands shoved deep into his pockets in a gesture that was so Doctor-like that you had to look away. “Two years. Two years, and everything I remember, everything I thought I was…”

“Some of it was real.” Your voice cracked. “We were real. We are real.”

“Were we?” He spun back to face you, and there were tears in his eyes, bright and angry and devastated. “You’ve been lying to me since the day we met. Every moment, every conversation, every...” His voice broke. “Every ‘I love you.’ Was any of it true?”

“All of it.” You stepped toward him, reaching for his hands. He let you take them, though his fingers remained stiff and unresponsive. “I know it doesn’t make sense. I know it’s not fair. But I loved the Doctor, and then I met you, and I loved you too, and I never meant for any of this to happen.”

“The Doctor.” He said the name like he was tasting it, trying to find himself in the syllables. “That’s who I am. Who I was. Some kind of...alien hero?”

“The last of the Time Lords. He’s saved countless worlds. Countless lives.” You squeezed his hands. “And right now, he’s the only one who can stop the alien parasites from destroying this town and everyone in it.”

He looked at you then with devastation in his eyes. “What happens to me? If he comes back, what happens to me?”

You couldn’t answer. You couldn’t tell him the truth, that John Smith would cease to exist, absorbed back into the vast, ancient consciousness of the Doctor like a drop of water into an ocean. That the gentle, ordinary man you’d spent two years loving would become nothing more than a dream, a footnote, a brief flicker of humanity in an impossibly long life.

But he saw the answer in your silence, and his face crumpled.

“No.” He pulled his hands from yours, backing away. “No. I don’t want this. I don’t want to be him. I want to be me. I want to be John Smith, the librarian, who burns pasta sauce and loves you more than anything in the world. Doesn’t that matter? Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“It means everything,” you whispered, tears streaming down your face. “But they are here. They’ll kill you, and everyone else, unless the Doctor comes back. I don’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice.” His voice cracked on the words. “Please. Please, don’t make me do this. We can run. We can hide. We can find another way.”

“There is no other way.” You pulled out the fob watch, holding it up between you. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, John. But I made a promise.”

He stared at the watch, and you saw the moment understanding truly hit him. The moment he realized that the thing in your hand contained everything he’d been, everything he really was, and that opening it would mean the end of everything he’d become.

“I love you,” he said, and it sounded like a goodbye. “Whatever else was a lie, that wasn’t. I love you, and I was happy. For two years, I was so happy.”

“I know.” You stepped closer, reaching up to cup his face, memorizing the lines of it one last time. “I was happy too. And I love you. Both of you. All of you. The Doctor, and John Smith, and every version of you that’s ever existed or ever will.”

He closed his eyes, leaning into your touch. A tear slipped down his cheek, warm against your fingers. “Will he remember? The Doctor? Will he remember us?”

“I don’t know.” It was the most honest thing you’d said all night.

“I hope he does.” John opened his eyes, and there was something almost like acceptance in them now. “I hope he remembers that he was loved. That he was happy. That he was a good man.”

“You were a good man,” you said fiercely. “You are a good man. The best man I’ve ever known.”

He kissed you then: soft, desperate, trembling with all the fear and love and grief of a man saying goodbye to his entire existence. You kissed him back with everything you had, pouring two years of stolen happiness into the press of your lips, trying to make him understand without words how much he’d meant to you.

When you finally pulled apart, he was crying openly, and so were you.

“Do it,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Before I lose my nerve.”

You opened the fob watch.

Golden light exploded outward, filling the TARDIS, filling John, filling you. He arched backward, his mouth opening in a silent scream, and you watched as two years of false memories were stripped away, replaced by centuries of impossible knowledge. You watched John Smith dissolve into the vast, ancient, terrible consciousness of the Doctor.

And then the light faded, and the Doctor opened his eyes.

They were the same brown eyes. The same face, the same body, the same hands that had held yours a thousand times. But the expression in them was different. Older. Harder. A universe of grief and fury and cold, calculating rage. “Where are they?”

“Old church on the hill,” you said, your voice hollow. “Sunset tomorrow. They’re wearing human skin.”

He nodded once, sharply, and strode past you to the TARDIS console. His hands flew across the controls with the practiced ease of centuries, waking systems that had been dormant for two years. He didn’t look at you. Didn’t acknowledge the tears still wet on your cheeks, or the way your hands were shaking, or the shattered expression on your face.

“Doctor?” you asked hesitantly.

“Not now.” His voice was clipped, distracted. “I need to think. These are dangerous, but they’re predictable. If they’ve taken human form, they’ll be vulnerable. I can work with that.”

And just like that, John Smith was gone. The Doctor was back. And you were standing in the middle of the TARDIS, clutching an empty fob watch, feeling like your heart had been ripped out of your chest.

The Doctor dealt with the Family of Blood.

You didn’t see him do it. He told you to stay in the TARDIS, and you did, because you couldn’t bear to watch him be the Doctor, cold and brilliant and terrifying, when all you could see was the ghost of the man you’d lost.

He came back three hours later, his suit slightly rumpled, his expression grimly satisfied.

“It’s done,” he said. “They’re in three separate eternal prisons, scattered across three separate dimensions. They won’t be bothering anyone ever again.”

“Good.” You were sitting on the jump seat, still holding the empty fob watch. You hadn’t moved since he left.

He looked at you then uncertainly. “The danger’s passed. We can leave whenever you’re ready.”

“I’m not going with you.”

The words came out before you’d consciously decided to say them, and once they were out, you knew they were true. You couldn’t go back. You couldn’t climb into the TARDIS and fly off to new adventures and pretend that the last two years hadn’t happened. That you hadn’t fallen in love with a man who no longer existed.

The Doctor went utterly still. “What?”

“I need time.” You set the fob watch down on the console, your fingers lingering on the cool metal. “I need to…pack up my flat. Say goodbye. I’ve been here two years. I have a life here. I can’t just leave.”

“You don’t have a life here,” he said, and there was an edge to his voice now. “You had a cover story. A role to play. The role is over.”

“It wasn’t just a role.” You stood up, finally meeting his eyes. “I worked in that bakery for two years. I made friends. I built a life. And I loved John Smith, and he loved me, and now he’s dead, and I need to grieve him. Can you understand that?”

Something crossed his face, too fast to read, there and gone in an instant. “I remember it,” he said, and his voice was quieter now. “The transformation. Two years of memories, all at once. I remember everything.”

“Then you know why I can’t come with you tonight.”

He didn’t argue. He just stood there, his hands in his pockets, his expression unreadable, and watched you walk out of the TARDIS and into the darkening evening.

Your flat was exactly as you’d left it. The half-finished cup of tea on the counter. The pile of library books on the coffee table. The photograph of you and John at the riverbank, taken last summer, his arm around your shoulders and his smile so wide and bright and happy.

You sat on the edge of your bed and finally, finally let yourself cry.

You cried for John Smith, the gentle librarian who had loved you simply and completely. You cried for the Doctor, who had trusted you with his entire existence and come back to find that you’d fallen in love with a version of him that no longer existed. And you cried for yourself, for the impossible situation you’d been put in, for the love you’d found and lost and would never quite get over.

At some point, exhaustion overtook you, and you fell into a fitful sleep, still fully clothed, still clutching the photograph.

You woke to the sound of the TARDIS materializing in your living room.

The wheezing groan was unmistakable, and you bolted upright, your heart pounding. The blue box solidified in the corner of your flat, looking utterly incongruous next to your secondhand bookshelf and the potted plant you’d been nursing for eighteen months.

The door opened, and the Doctor stepped out.

He looked…different. Still the same body, the same suit, the same ridiculous hair. But some of the coldness had gone from his eyes. Some of the fury had ebbed. He looked at you, and for just a moment, you saw something that might have been vulnerability.

“You didn’t come back,” he said.

“I told you I needed time.”

“It’s been three days.”

You blinked. “It’s been one night.”

“Time moves differently in the TARDIS. You know that.” He took a step toward you, then stopped, as if unsure of his welcome. “I waited. Outside your flat, at first, and then inside, when you didn’t come out. And then I…I started thinking.”

“That’s usually where the trouble begins.”

His mouth quirked, just slightly. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was closer than anything you’d seen since he’d come back. “You said something. Before you left. You said you loved John Smith, and you loved me. Both of us.”

You looked away. “I was emotional. I didn’t mean...”

“Yes, you did.” He crossed the room, stopping just in front of you. Close enough that you could smell the familiar scent of him. “You meant every word. I know you did. Because I remember. I remember everything, and I remember how you looked when you said it.”

“Doctor...”

“I’m not him.” The words came out harsh, almost angry. “I’m not John Smith. I’m not gentle or simple or uncomplicated. I’ve done terrible things. I’ve made choices that would horrify him. I carry the weight of a billion billion lives, and it’s made me hard, and cold, and sometimes cruel.” He reached out and caught your chin, tilting your face up to meet his eyes. “But I am not a different person. I’m just…more. Everything he was, I am. Everything he felt, I feel. And I am tired of pretending that’s not true.”

Your breath caught. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying…” He paused, struggling with the words in a way the Doctor rarely did. “John Smith was a simpler version of me. Unburdened. Free. He could tell you he loved you without the weight of centuries pressing down on him. He could ask you to marry him without hearing the screams of everyone he’s ever failed.” His grip on your chin gentled, his thumb brushing across your cheek. “I can’t be him. I can’t be that unburdened. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel what he felt.”

You stared at him, barely daring to breathe. “You remember loving me.”

“I remember everything.” His voice dropped, rougher now. “Every moment. Every touch. Every word. It’s all in here...” he tapped his temple “...and it’s not just memories. It’s not just data. It’s real. It’s as real as anything I’ve ever felt. And I have lived a very, very long time.”

“Then why did you...”

“Push you away?” He laughed, a short, humorless sound. “Because I’m an idiot. Because I was furious at my enemies and terrified of what I’d put you through and convinced that you couldn’t possibly want me...the real me, the whole impossible mess of me, when you’d had him.”

“John Smith was you,” you said, your voice breaking. “Just you. Without the pain. Without the weight. But still you.”

“And you loved him.”

“I loved you.”

Something shattered in his expression. The cold mask cracked, and underneath it was everything you’d been searching for, the Doctor, raw and open and terrified, his ancient eyes bright with something that looked very much like hope.

“Then come back,” he said. “Come back to the TARDIS. Come back to me. We can figure out the rest as we go.”

You didn’t answer with words. You reached up, grabbed the lapels of his suit jacket, and pulled him down into a kiss.

It wasn’t like kissing John Smith. John had been gentle, hesitant. The Doctor kissed like he did everything else: with intensity, with focus, with the barely contained energy of a man who had lived too long and felt too much and didn’t know how to be gentle even when he wanted to be.

He made a sound against your mouth, something between a groan and a growl, and his hands slid into your hair, tilting your head back to deepen the kiss. When you gasped, he took advantage, his tongue sliding against yours, and the taste of him was familiar and alien all at once.

“I’ve got two years of memories,” he murmured against your lips, “and two years of wanting. Do you have any idea what that’s like? To remember wanting someone and not being able to touch them?”

“I think I have some idea,” you breathed.

He pulled back just far enough to look at you, his pupils blown wide, his breathing ragged. “This isn’t going to be gentle. I’m not…I can’t be gentle. Not right now. I've too much burning in my head.”

“I don’t need gentle.”

Something dark and hungry flashed in his eyes. “Good.”

He kissed you again, harder this time, and walked you backward until your shoulders hit the wall. His body pressed against yours, lean and solid, and you could feel the double beat of his hearts thundering against your chest. His hands left your hair to trail down your sides, gripping your hips with a force that would probably leave bruises.

“Tell me to stop,” he said, his mouth moving to your jaw, your throat, the sensitive spot just below your ear. “Tell me to slow down. Tell me you need time.”

“Don’t stop.”

He made a sound that was almost a snarl and hoisted you up, your legs wrapping around his waist instinctively. The wall was cold against your back, but he was warm, so warm, warmer than a human should be, his body temperature running high with Time Lord biology and barely restrained desire.

Clothes became an impediment. Buttons were undone with frustrating slowness, fabric pushed aside rather than removed entirely. His mouth was everywhere: your throat, your collarbone, the curve of your shoulder, and his hands were everywhere too, mapping your body with an intensity that bordered on desperation.

“I remember,” he kept saying, the words pressed into your skin like prayers. “I remember everything. Every moment I wanted to touch you like this. Every night I lay beside you.”

“I know.” You tangled your fingers in his hair, pulling his mouth back to yours. “I know. I was there.”

He laughed, a real laugh, surprised and almost giddy, and kissed you again, and this time there was no more talking.

He took you against the wall, then on the floor, then finally in your bed, the TARDIS abandoned in the corner. He wasn’t gentle. His hands gripped hard enough to leave marks, his teeth scraped against sensitive skin, his rhythm was demanding and relentless and utterly, impossibly him. But there was tenderness too, in the way he whispered your name, in the way he paused to check that you were alright, in the way he held you afterward like you were the most precious thing in the universe.

You lay tangled together in the wreckage of your sheets, the Doctor’s arm wrapped around your waist, his face buried in your hair.

“I’m still not him,” the Doctor said quietly, after a long silence. “I can’t be. I can’t give you the simple life, the quiet happiness, the white picket fence.”

“I don’t want a white picket fence.”

“You wanted him.”

You turned in his arms, facing him. His expression was guarded, but his eyes gave him away, ancient and afraid. “I wanted you,” you said firmly. “Every version of you. John Smith, the Doctor, whoever you are tomorrow and the day after that. I didn’t fall in love with a librarian. I fell in love with you. The impossible, infuriating, brilliant, broken, wonderful you.”

He stared at you for a long moment. Then he smiled, a real smile, not the manic grin he used as armor, but something softer. Something that looked almost like John Smith’s smile, but deeper, older, more complicated.

“I don’t deserve you,” he said.

“Probably not. But you’re stuck with me anyway.”

He pulled you closer, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “Good. Because I’m never doing that again. The transformation. The forgetting. I’m never giving you up. Not for anything.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” His arms tightened around you. “Now get some sleep. We’ve got a universe to explore in the morning.”

You closed your eyes, listening to the steady double rhythm of his hearts, and let yourself believe that maybe, just maybe, you could have both, the Doctor and John Smith, the adventure and the love, the impossible and the real.

a/n: Likes, reblogs and comments are appreciated. <3

You groan while pinching the bridge of your nose.

Before Langdon's dismissal due to apparently smuggling patients' prescriptions out of the ED and back home for his own personal use, he, as well as the likes of Robby, Abbot, and McKay, were some of your favorite mentors. And when Frank was sent packing on the road to recovery, you became someone he regularly confided in.

You'd initially thought it was because he missed being at work and just wanted to keep up with the goings-on in the ED. Now, you wonder if it wasn't due to loneliness because things haven't exactly been going well for him.

Between the situation at work, trying and failing at rehab due to continually relapsing, and Abby threatening divorce, as well as taking full custody of their children... Some days, all he seems to do is spiral.

That's where you come in. It began as just the occasional text, then a random phone call, a request for a coffee meetup, and somewhere along the way, contact started bordering on obsessive.

You'll never forget the first morning you woke up to nearly a dozen texts from him—half being apologies for flying off the handle because he was in the middle of a manic episode.

That should've been the moment you blocked his number.

But instead... It's what women are always taught: you must be nice. Put their wellbeing above your own, even to your detriment. They have it so hard, after all. Their feelings are so fragile.

So you forgave him.

Now, here you lie sacrificing sleep for his benefit.

I need to go back to sleep for work tomorrow. Goodnight.

typing. . .

typing. . .

Sorry. Night.

You roll your eyes at his clipped, passive aggressive tone. All because you're not willing to stay up and entertain his feelings.

He shouldn't be talking to you like that anyway, especially given the hour.

Tossing your cell back on the nightstand, you roll onto your side facing away from it in the hopes of drifting off again soon.

You're in the midst of aiding Robby with prepping a patient for a thrombectomy before they're carted off to a specialized suite when your phone vibrates in your pocket.

Frank—that's your first thought now anytime it buzzes or chimes or anything pops up on your screen. Like when a mouse trap snaps, and you're left to assume it's caught a pest in its metal hinges. You don't know until you've checked it

Another buzz and you grit your teeth.

You need to put it on do not disturb at your earliest convenience.

Once the elderly man is deemed fit for travel across the hospital, a team comes shortly after to retrieve and wheel him away. Snapping off your gloves with irritation, you toss them into a waste bin and slip your phone from your pocket with a quiet curse—a sound that surprises Robby when he glances in your direction.

He watches as your thumbs fly across the digital keyboard and a crease knots itself right between your furrowed brows. "Everything alright?"

"It's fine," you snap—still typing.

Crossing his arms, as well as the room itself to reach you, he waits with pursed lips. "Boyfriend problems?"

You snort. "He's married, so not likely." You glance straight ahead, then press the heel of your palm to your forehead in annoyance. "We're not... He's just a friend."

Robby's attempt to skim the tiny text on your screen is futile without his readers on. "Going out on a limb, but did this 'friend' used to work here until quite recently?"

You quickly lock the device before tucking it back away and turning to face him. "He's going through a hard time and just needs someone to talk to."

Robby takes a small step forward, closing the gap between you. "Some particular reason that person needs to be you? And during work hours?"

Vibrate.

You step past him. "It's not a big deal."

"Didn't realize you and Langdon were that close," Robby remarks while following along behind.

Once you've reached your destination of the nurses station, you lean your head back and study the board above. "Frank feels alone right now, and—"

"It's Frank now, huh?" he asks with a surprised, yet humorless chuckle.

You roll your eyes before doing the same with your head, but in his direction. "I feel like you're trying to imply something."

He shrugs before glancing away and watching idly as your coworkers bustle about. "Just seemed like a heated exchange is all."

Robby looks at you again.

You exhale a quite huff of air before stepping away. "I need to grab another patient."

"You need to be careful," he calls after you.

"Always am," you mumble.

It's well past the middle of the day before you get another chance to really check your phone. You did briefly in the restroom and it only had one text from Frank:

FaceTime me during your next break ☀️

You'd raised a brow at the emoji, but didn't respond, deciding to wait like he suggested before you reached out.

Now sitting outside in the sun and fresh air, you sigh, then hold your phone at a distance from atop your knees before calling.

It's on the second ring when he picks up.

"Hey," Frank says with a smile and sleek, tousled hair falling over his brow. With an arm resting beneath his chin, you get a glimpse of a bare shoulder.

"Are you in bed?" you ask nervously.

His brows furrow. "Huh? Oh, yeah. I had a meeting earlier so now I'm just kinda...lazing around."

You nod while glancing away and watch as a pair of birds take flight from a nearby sign.

"Your day okay so far?"

You return your attention to the screen. "So far," you reply. "You asked me to call you. What were you...wanting to talk about?"

Shifting positions, you get a flash of Frank's bare chest before he leans back against the headboard behind him. "Just wondering if you wanted to grab dinner after your shift." He smiles. "My treat. I can pick you up when you get off, take you out, then bring you back."

You blink a couple times. "And talk about what?" you ask warily, already feeling like this is a bad idea.

He smiles softly. "Whatever you want, sweetheart."

A frown tugs at your lips. "You shouldn't call me that."

He chuckles. "What if I told you that's what I have your name saved as in my phone?"

Your eyes flit between his. "I would say that that's inappropriate."

He huffs and rolls his eyes. "I'm kidding, Jesus."

You kick a pebble with the toe of your shoe. "After work I usually just like to go home and take a shower." Your eyes flit back to the screen. "Get something to eat, then—"

"Look, you're gonna eat anyway, so let me take care of dinner tonight. Less dishes for you to wash," he remarks with a grin.

You shift in your seat. "I don't know that your wife would like that."

He snorts flippantly. "Well, getting her opinion would require her actually talking to me." Frank looks at his phone again. "I could always call her? Ask what she thinks? Maybe give her your number. I mean, the two of you could compare notes about me and—"

You throw your head back and groan in irritation, which earns you a laugh.

"So what'd'ya say? I won't have you out long. Hour or less. Promise."

You chew the inside of your lip.

"C'mon," he insists softly. "It's the least I can do to repay how good you've been to me since all this crap started."

"Just trying to be a good friend," you mumble.

"So am I," Frank states quietly.

This is a chance for you to seize. Being face-to-face, you'll have a better chance of getting through to him that the late-night texts need to stop, as do the pet names. And that he needs to put just as much effort into maintaining meaningful contact with Abby. That while you have no problem being his friend, he needs to lean heavily on his sponsor instead. It isn't...right to put it all on you—fellow medical professional or not.

"Okay," you relent with a nod. "But just for a little while."

He practically beams. "I'll be waiting for you in the parking lot at the end of your shift."

"There she is," Frank says with a smile while popping open the passenger side door of his vehicle.

Unlocking the trunk of your own, you quickly toss your pack inside before slamming it shut again and relocking it.

Even as you're sinking inside, Frank can't help himself from sliding a palm down your arm.

"So," you begin while pulling your ice water toward you. "What were you wanting to talk about?"

Frank leans back and you watch as a small smile plays on his lips. "Whatever you want."

You release a quiet exhale through your nose. Ok, fine. Works for you anyway. Just when you go to open your mouth, however, the waitress returns with your respective meals: a cheeseburger with all the fixings for him and grilled cheese sandwiches with creamy tomato soup for you.

You grant the woman a quiet thanks and a sweet smile, then take a bite of one of your buttery sandwiches before speaking. "I'd like for the late night texts to stop," you say gently.

Frank's brows knit together and he plops his burger back onto his plate before wiping his hands with a few cheap brown napkins.

"Just...nothing after 9 p.m., okay? It doesn't feel appropriate."

He crosses his arms. "That a rule for all your friends, or just me?"

Him getting defensive took a shorter amount of time than you thought it would. "Frank, I'm not trying to hurt you. It means something to me that I'm someone you feel safe in confiding in, but boundaries have to start being set. The same goes for my breaks. I only get a couple small chances during my workday to decompress for a moment before going back to it, and I prefer not to spend it on the phone. The ED is hectic enough as it is, and not being able to get a breather in because I'm FaceTiming or on a call doesn't help the matter."

A muscle in his jaw ticks. "Anything else?"

"No more pet names." You debate tacking on something about no more in-person meetups as well, but are unsure about it. Ones that're late like this one feel more akin to dates, which you're absolutely not alright with, but being on dayshift... Eating a late meal is really your only option, in terms of going out for food.

Frank rolls his eyes and shakes his head before taking a sip of his Coke.

"I want to be your friend. One who's there for you to confide in, but this is starting to feel like dependency at times. I mean, the night that you spammed me with texts—"

He suddenly slams his hand off the table and it causes the dishes to rattle and you to jump, as well as other customers to glance in your direction.

You sink down in your seat from embarrassment.

"I wasn't myself that night, alright? I was—"

"Using?" you interrupt. "I have to be able to rest for work."

He snorts. "Work, work, work." He deadpans. "Because you really think that place gives a shit about you? That Robby does?"

"Robby is the only reason you were put on leave to get clean instead of having your license revoked as a whole," you say while doing your utmost to keep your tone level. "So, yes, I think it's safe to say that he does indeed care."

He blows a raspberry and your temper climbs another notch from the immature gesture.

"You need to talk to Abby," you say quietly. "She's not the one who did wrong, so the obligation is on you to reach out to her. She's your wife. You have two little ones together. You need to fight for your family. For yourself."

He glares at you for a moment, then picks up his burger again, signaling that the conversation has clearly come to an end.

The remainder of dinner was a silent affair, with you replaying every word you spoke to him on repeat in your head, wondering if maybe you'd been too hard, or had overthought things he's done, and thus had an overreaction. He's delicate right now, isn't he? What if tonight only makes him worse; sends him spiraling? Gives him cause to feel all alone again?

"I really do care about you," you tell him with care. "But I'm not a sponsor—someone who's equipped to know how to handle the throws of addiction. I just...feel overwhelmed at times. I'm terrified I'm going to do or say something, and then you'll get worse and it'll be my fault."

His shoulders loosen, as well as his grip on the steering wheel. "I'm sorry if contact from me has felt excessive. I just... I don't really have anybody else to lean on." Reaching over, he settles a hand atop your knee and gives it a gentle squeeze. "Which is why I need you right now."

You speak once he's returned his hand to the wheel. "The people in NA—"

"They don't know me like you do," he states with a shake of his head. "I mean, how many of them, if I shot them a text at 2 a.m., would've answered right away?"

You knew you made a mistake in doing so.

"You're all I have for the time being. And if Abby follows through with divorce—"

"She won't," you interrupt. "I'm sure she's just saying that because she wants to know that you'll do everything you can to fight for her and the family you've created together."

He shrugs. "Or they'd be better off."

You frown. "None of them will. Tanner and Penny need their father. Abby needs her husband. And PTMC needs its doctor back. Frank, I want to see you succeed in every way possible. But you have to want it for yourself for it to happen."

He clicks on his turn signal and makes a right into PTMC's parking lot. "I just don't know if I can get through the first year, which everyone keeps telling me is the hardest. Just one week is bad enough."

"You're going to fall off the wagon," you say while unbuckling your seatbelt as he pulls up next to your car. "But what counts is whether you make the effort to get back on it."

Once he's parked and switched off the engine, he unbuckles as well, so you stay rooted to the spot incase there's something else he wishes to discuss.

"I just... I need to know that you're not going anywhere. Because some days," he says while turning toward you. "It feels like you're all I have left. I can't..." he extends a trembling hand toward you and cups your cheek tenderly. "Sweetheart, I can't lose you, too."

You swallow thickly, then swipe your bag from between your feet. "Okay, I think I need to get out now."

Dropping his hand, Frank turns and quickly locks your door from his side. "I just need you to listen to me. Five minutes, that's all I need," he explains in a rush of words while leaning over the center console.

You keep your eyes trained on him while sliding your hand along the door behind you in desperate search of the handle. "Frank—"

"Baby, just listen to me."

"H-Have you been using tonight?" you question while reeling back.

"I took a little something before I left the house." He shakes his head while taking your face between his hands. "It's not a big deal. If you just kiss me, you'll know. You'll feel what I do. It's not all in my fucking head, I know it."

You shove against his chest, but it's futile as he continues to lean in closer and closer.

And then you decide to scream. "Let me out! Now! Let me out of the fucking car!" you shout while slamming your bag against his dash. "Unlock the doors, Frank!"

"Fine! Fine! Jesus!"

Turning swiftly around, he clicks to release the locks, and you stumble out of the car a moment later.

He throws himself across the seat you've just vacated. "Listen, I'm sor—"

His apologies are cut short when you slam the door in his face and unlock your own vehicle with violently trembling hands before sinking inside and immediately locking the door behind you.

You don't even bother with your seatbelt before tearing out of the parking lot to race home.

"Hey," a familiar voice croons from behind you while a large palm is pressed to the small of your back.

You shriek and drop everything which was previously cradled in your arms and ready to be stored away in your employee locker and watch as it clatters to the floor. Swinging around with wide, searching eyes, you sigh when you see that it's only Robby.

"You alright?" he asks while kneeling with a groan before scooping up your personal belongings and handing them up to you.

You nod feebly. "Yes. Fine," you reply while hanging up a thin jacket, followed by a small backpack.

Standing again, he crosses his arms, watching as you wrap your stethoscope around your neck. "I come and find you every morning and that's never been your reaction. Hardly seem fine. Somethin' happen last night, or on your way here?"

Him showing concern is enough to open the floodgates you otherwise thought you'd put a pretty solid barricade over last night before going to sleep, which took you rather long to find as you tossed and turned—trying your very best, and subsequently failing, to calm your body's panicked response after earlier events in the evening.

You click your locker shut and shake your head while blinking away tears, because if you open your mouth, all he's getting in response is an ugly cry.

You go to step past, until Robby grabs you gently by the forearm. "Hey, talk to me."

So much for trying.

Burying your face in your hands, you start to cry. Full-on sobbing which wracks through your body and leaves you gasping for air.

Taking you gently into his arms, Robby winds them around you while you burrow into the safety his chest provides.

He presses his lips to the crown of your head and murmurs against it. "What happened, honey? Tell me what's got you so tore up this morning."

You shake your head. "Not here," you mumble while fisting his black scrub shirt in your fists.

"Let me take you somewhere that we can talk privately, then."

Now standing under the bright sun, which is covered only by a few fluffy clouds that float lazily past, you gaze across the city of Pittsburgh in all its bustling glory.

Robby is meanwhile busy watching a video on your phone which was recorded last night on your outdoor camera.

"He was out there for two fucking hours?" he hisses in disbelief before glancing up to you.

You nod. "Maybe he... Maybe he meant to scare me because I jilted him." You shake your head. "I don't know. Like I told you about all the texts and calls, it's not the first time his behavior has bordered on obsessive—"

Robby pushes off the railing. "Sweetheart, we're far past that. This?" He says while shaking your phone before planting it in your palm. "Is stalking."

You pocket the device.

"He tried to force himself on you after you made clear how uncomfortable he's made you, and then he sat outside your house for hours in the middle of the night. I think you have more than enough cause to file a police report at this point."

You shake your head so hard that it makes you dizzy. "No, Robby, I-I can't do that. This isn't him. He's not himself right now, and you know that. It's why you didn't report him yourself." You wave your hand. "Me doing something so drastic and reactionary could jeopardize not just his recovery, but his entire life: his marriage, custody—"

"Well," Robby says with a dramatic shrug. "Maybe he should've considered that before he locked you in his car, and, now, made you fear for your safety in your own home."

You sigh and throw your head back. "I didn't tell you because I wanted to give him a criminal record." You lower your chin. "I just...wanted to confide in someone."

He takes a few small steps forward.

"I want to believe that he's going to beat his addiction and get his life back on track. I have no interest in preventing it. Not when—when he was here—he was so helpful toward me and my education."

"I think you've more than repaid that kindness," he states while crossing his arms. "Don't you?"

Worried that he won't stop until he's pressured you into making a trip down to the local precinct, or at least into talking to Ahmad, you turn on your heel to head in the other direction.

"Alright," he says, yielding to your refusal. "We let it go for now. But if he does it again, then you really need to consider going a step further by filing a report. Otherwise, it's not going to stop. If anything, you'd be putting yourself at risk of things getting worse by allowing him to get away with it."

You shift from one foot to the other. "I'll think about it. In the meantime," you say while turning to head back down. "I packed a bag for a couple nights. I plan to wait a few hours before I book a room because I'm not sure yet, but I may stay at a hotel tonight, just to be safe."

"You shouldn't have to do that," Robby comments while following along behind you.

"Just for a night or two," you reassure.

Once you've opened the door to the stairwell, he holds it in place. "I have a guest room."

You pause, then turn back to him.

"You're more than welcome to use it."

A smile of thanks graces your lips. "I appreciate that, Robby. A lot. But—"

He shakes his head. "No 'buts'. It'll save you a few hundred, and make me feel better by knowing where you are. It's why I have it in the first place. I thought..." he nervously scratches the back of his head. "I thought I'd get use out of it when I got married someday. In-laws, or a bedroom for one my kids. Some place friends could stay if they visited during the holidays."

He doesn't look at you when he attempts a shrug of indifference. Attempts, because you know it bothers him, even if he's trying to pretend otherwise.

His eyes flit to yours. "Tonight after your shift, follow me home and you can crash there. For however long you need."

"This is important to you?" you question, wanting to make sure he doesn't feel somehow obligated to do this. You obviously understand a desire for privacy, especially in the moment, and you don't want to interrupt his.

He cups your cheek while nodding. "This is important to me."

Never ever ever, in your wildest dreams, did you think you'd so much as visit your attending's house, and now here you stand in the guest room right next to his own, turning down the bed after a shower.

You've expended effort to memorize every moment that you've been alone with him tonight. From standing at his back while he unlocked the front door, to taking inventory of his personal living space—which includes a considerable record collection that you pointed out, which he replied to with a humble shrug and a mumbled "Just wish I had more time to listen to 'em"—and even curiously sorting through his soaps in the shower.

It'd felt so intimate holding his razor in your hand before setting it back down and lathering yourself with a washcloth that you couldn't help but think about Robby using on himself.

Now washed and brushed and ready for bed, you're dressed only in panties, socks, and an over-sized t-shirt as you turn down the queen-size bed provided.

You're unaware, but there he stands behind you, leaning against the doorway with a small, satisfied smile which quickly morphs into pursued lips as you bend over to throw the covers back, thus granting him a generous view of your backside before your shirt slips back into place.

"Anything else you need before we both turn in for the night?" he asks quietly.

You turn back to Robby with a smile and a shake of your head. "I think I'm okay. I don't imagine I'll be doing much sleeping, anyway."

He raises a brow of interest. "Oh?"

"I'll probably spend the next few hours battling racing thoughts," you explain. As well as continually checking security cameras on your phone...

Robby considers, but fleetingly. "Would it make you feel safer to sleep next to me instead?"

Just as you're about to slip into bed, you turn back to him. A barrage of thoughts journey through your head in the blink of an eye.

Does he want that for reasons other than just making you feel safe? Why does your safety mean so much to him, anyway? Is he truly hoping you'll say yes? What is this dynamic between you, exactly? Does he see you more like a child, or a woman needing a man's protection? Is sleeping all Robby would intend for the two of you to do?

Of course it is! He doesn't adore you the way you have him since the first day you met. Shameful truth admitted? If roles were shifted, and it was him stalking you, the advances wouldn't be quite so unwanted... But you can't say such a terrible thing. No, it must remain strictly in your head.

"I wouldn't want to keep you up," is your expertly planned reply, whereas your heart and mind are both enthusiastically screaming 'Yes, now's your chance! Screw his brains out! Make him yours at last!'

You busy yourself with fluffing a pillow. "I'd ruin your sleep by tossing and turning all night."

Robby takes a small step forward, causing wooden floorboards to creak beneath his weight. "Rather you do it beside me."

Tossing the pillow back down, you go to speak again to refuse one last time, knowing he's just trying to be kind, until he twines his fingers between your own and tugs you along to his room. "C'mon, you'll feel safer with me sleeping next to you."

He keeps staring at you. Maybe he thinks you don't notice because you're turned onto your back while he's otherwise turned onto his side, but you do. You're aware of everything he does. Constantly.

Even just the whisper of his voice sends your mind afloat and your body abuzz.

Does that make you a stalker? You roll your eyes at the ridiculous thought.

You only spy on him in various trauma bays...sometimes.

"What're you thinking about?" he rumbles.

The fact that you're lying beside me entirely naked, save for a pair of briefs which I wish you'd take off, too.

With an arm thrown over your forehead, you shrug. "Everything."

He chuckles, then slides a hand all the way up your arm that's resting at your side until it's come to settle just under the cuff of your t-shirt. "Sounds like you've got a lot going on in there." A pause. "Any of it about Langdon?"

You nod.

He brushes his thumb over your skin. "You think about him a lot?"

Your brow twitches. "All the time."

His lips tug into a frown. "Is that why, then? That you're trying so hard to protect him? Because you have feelings for him?"

You smile at such a silly thought and shake your head. "No, I don't. I just want to see him succeed as a friend and coworker. He's someone I greatly admired in the ED, and I thought he, Abby, and their children made such a sweet family." You roll your head to the side to look at Robby. "Him, the prestigious doctor, and she the sweet stay-at-home mother with two little ones, a pretty house, and a dog."

"You're a good friend," he whispers.

"Maybe too good," you reply.

"That something you want? A family?"

You nod slowly. "I do. But with our schedules... How our lives revolve around work makes even attempting to find someone difficult. On my days off, the last thing I want to waste my time with is a dead-end first date. So I do literally anything else while telling myself that the right one will come along when he's meant to."

"I thought I'd have one by now," he murmurs. "A wife to come home to. Kids grown up and off to college—living their own lives. Hell, maybe even a grandkid or two... At least on the way."

You turn fully onto your side and he lies his hand between the two of you, which you rest your own atop of. "You could live another fifty years, Robby. You could still have that. I know people think otherwise, but so long as people try to take care of themselves, seventy doesn't have to be that old. You can still have a family; children you get to watch grow up."

He forces a smile, then cups your cheek while brushing the pad of his thumb over the apple of it. "I was jealous, y'know? Of the attention you'd been giving Langdon."

Your brows furrow. "What? Why?"

His smile slowly falters, but the way he's touching you doesn't. "Maybe I thought..." He sighs. "I'm sorry. I don't want to be another superior who crosses a line. That's the reason you're here in the first place."

Is he... Is he coming onto you? You've spent so long continually beating yourself over the head with the thought that he would never so much as glance twice in your direction, and yet here you lie in his bed where he seems unable to not touch you.

"Tell me," you whisper. "Please."

"You're in my house, sweetheart. My bed. What does that tell you about how I feel?"

You're practically buzzing with excitement and eagerness to climb atop him and shower him in affectionate kisses, all while telling him that you'd be more than willing to give him all those things he's seemingly convinced himself that it's too late for him to have now.

You're crazy about him, but if you go off the deep end, you'll scare him away by morphing into Langdon 2.0.

You scoot closer and press your palms against his belly while gently kneading the soft swell of it. "Do you have any idea," you begin breathlessly, since your heart is now pounding. "How elated I was when you invited me to come stay with you?"

A look of surprise paints his aging features. "Really?"

You grin while nodding. You cautiously slide your hand upward, through the smattering of dark hair that covers the planes of his stomach and chest. "All I ever wanted was your attention."

Robby moves his hand to the crown of your shoulder, then down your waist. "You've had it, sweetheart. The whole time."

Sliding your fingers into the coarse, scratchy trimmings of his beard, you can't stop yourself from giggling in exhilaration.

"You're far more interested than I thought," he states while carefully repositioning himself atop you, ready for you to withdraw.

Instead, you spread your legs to grant him plentiful room between them.

You throw an arm around the back of his neck while cupping his cheek in your other hand. "You have no idea," you sigh while lifting your hips, wanting him to undress you.

He leans down and fully settles his weight atop you, and you moan when his belly pushes you further into the mattress. Kissing your cheek, you can't keep yourself from smiling like a love-crazed teenager who's hot for teacher.

"You asked me to tell you," he groans against your ear. "So now it's your turn."

You shudder when he slips a calloused hand beneath your shirt. "What if I ruin it?" you sigh while throwing your calves over his own.

He finally presses his lips to yours. "You won't."

He says that now...

It'll scare him off, and then this perfect moment will be over. You'll lose him before you even have him. Just the thought makes you want to burst into tears.

"I'm scared," you whisper before kissing him back.

"Of?" he inquires while pushing your shirt to just beneath your chin so he can suckle at your nipples.

God, you're in Heaven.

"You stopping. Or...losing you."

He plants a kiss between your breasts. "You won't. So, tell me."

He moves his palm up your forearm before twining his fingers between your own.

Throwing your head back, your eyes flutter closed. "I think I'm in love with you."

His cock stirs, so he hooks a thumb under the waistband of his briefs. "Say that again if you want me inside of you," he rasps.

"I love you," you cry while holding tightly to him.

Robby doesn't even consider protection before sinking between your thighs.

The following morning comes far too early for you both. One time hadn't been nearly enough, so he insisted the two of you keep going until he could no longer maintain an erection. Three orgasms later, and he was finally spent while you lied there crying tears of joy as he leaked out of you and down your thighs.

You'd curled up against his body—literally trying to get as close to him as you possibly could—before drifting into a deep and peaceful slumber.

You had felt so, so safe in his arms and against his brawny chest.

And just as you slipped off to sleep, you could've swore you heard the sentiment returned: I've loved you from the first.

First what you didn't catch. Time you met? Time he looked at you? Spoke to you? All those were on the same day.

You suppose all that matters is that the feeling is returned.

When Robby's alarm sounds, you stir quietly, but don't rise. Neither does he, instead choosing to savor the moment of your limbs twined tightly around his like you're afraid of letting go. When he wakes you, it's with a kiss and an offer of a shared shower. Something you easily accept. Before washing, you stand beneath the hot, steamy water, merely holding yourself to him while telling him over and over again how happy you are.

At least with the water running, you can't make out the tears he sheds.

The two of you manage a discussion on the way to work—in his truck, no less, as he insisted on driving. You had nervously started it by already trying to roll back last night incase he felt regretful because it'd just been the heat of the moment for him. Until he reached across the center console and took your hand while reassuring you that while this may be brand new, and that you may each be unaware of the exact direction that it'll lead, he wants nothing more than to find out along with you.

So you'd held quietly to his hand for the remainder of the ride while your skin tingled from the lingering effects of his touch, including a pleasant ache between your thighs where you'd held him.

A handful of people seem to notice that something is different. At one point, Dana even makes a comment that you seem to be glowing, coupled with a knowing look in Robby's direction, but you had merely smiled and said that maybe it was the good weather.

When Cassie finds Robby staring at you for a moment longer than usual—which is truly saying something—she simply walks away with an amused grin and a playful shake of her head.

Your walking on air is cut short during your afternoon break, however, when you go outside for a bit of respite, only to run smackdab into the unexpected presence of Frank.

"I need to talk to you," he insists while holding tightly to your arms.

You stutter for a reply, but because he's taken you entirely by surprise, your mind is lagging the least bit behind as you pulls you further from the ambulance bay's sliding doors.

"F-Frank, what're you—"

He takes your face between his hands and when your eyes stare into his, which are glossed over with pinned pupils, your heart sinks. "Are you high?" you ask in disbelief.

"Doesn't matter," he mutters with a shake of his head. "I need you and I cannot lose you, okay? You are the only one who sees me. Who gets me. Sweetheart, I love y—"

"Hey!" Robby shouts before gripping him by the back of his t-shirt and tossing him to the side. "You get the hell away from her!"

Shoving you behind him, Robby stations himself squarely between the two of you.

Frank goes to advance toward you again, until Robby shoves him back once again, causing him to stumble. "I cannot believe that you would show up here of all places in this kind of fucking shape, Langdon."

Frank seethes. "Get out of my way. This doesn't concern you, Robby."

You consider making a run for it to get Ahmad to come outside and stop this before something terrible happens.

"You're damn right it does. She told me what you've been up to. Calling at all hours, coming onto her, sitting outside her goddamn house at night?" he asks incredulously. "You can't be that far gone that you think what you're doing is appropriate."

"She's the only thing I have fucking left!" Frank yells while gesturing toward you. "What's the problem, Robby? I have something that you never will? Huh? That it?"

If only he knew...

"Yeah," he says while coming closer with a malicious grin. "I've seen the way you look at her. Pulling her off other cases so she can be with you all day. You just couldn't wait to get me out of the way, could you?"

Keeping one arm behind himself and around your waist, you press yourself against Robby's back in fright.

"If I wanted you gone, Frank, I would've gone to the medical board. But I didn't, did I? Instead, I gave you a second chance. Seeing how that's going, maybe I made a mistake."

He leans in toward him. "You need to think about what means more to you: your family, job, and right to practice medicine, or her. Because you only get to choose one."

Frank's eyes flit to his. "Because if somebody posed the same choice to you, you'd have such an easy time picking. Then again, I guess you don't have to worry about the family part, given that you don't have any to lose." He sneers. "You can't keep me away from her."

"Watch me," Robby spits. "You ever come near her again—you ever put your fucking hands on her again—and I'll destroy what's left of your pathetic life. I'll go to the Medical Board, help her file a protective order, and testify in court on her behalf of how you've given her cause to fear for her safety. That'll put one hell of a wrench in staving off losing custody of your kids, won't it?"

You peek from around him while clutching at his hoody.

Frank tries to reach out to you, but Robby bats his hand away. "Go home, Frank. Get the hell out of here before I call security to have you arrested. Now!"

He takes a small step back, knowing that he's on the losing side. "I'm not giving up on us, baby. I know what I want."

Frank makes a reluctant turn and stumbles his way back to the parking lot.

Once he's out of sight, you collapse in Robby's arms in a heap of regretful sobs, feeling like this is your fault.

After the day of the confrontation, you were forced to change your number because Frank's constant contact became so excessive. He never showed up outside of your house again, at least, nor did he appear at work, much to your relief. So, for awhile you were left in the dark as to what was occurring in his life you'd once been so enmeshed in.

Things become easier before long without the stresses of his sobriety resting upon your shoulders.

With your mind back to focusing strictly on work, the only difficult part of your days becomes unruly patients, and your evenings center wholly around Robby—the center of your world.

You begin spending most nights at his place, until he finally poses the offer you had thought too good for you to ever hear: he wanted you to share his home; his bed; his life.

And you continue lovemaking without the hindrance of prophylactics. You never have a discussion about it, as it's just an unspoken agreement between you.

You're both teased about your longing looks, and lingering touches—by Jack most of all—but...you're both so very happy, so you're willing to take it in stride.

And then there's the inevitable: talk of Langdon returning so many months later.

Robby makes clear to you that he wants to you maintain a healthy distance from him, at least initially until he proves himself worth trusting again, and that if he ever touches you or makes unwanted advances again, you are to report straight to him and he'll take every step necessary to make it stop.

But to Langdon's credit, his return is rather unremarkable. There's awkwardly exchanged glances, but he doesn't trail after you or corner you by the lockers or in the restroom like you worried about the first few days.

The first time he speaks to you is almost two weeks later, in the employee lounge.

"Hey," he says weakly from the table shoved against the left wall.

With a protein shake now in-hand, you turn back to him while nervously eyeing the door. "Hey..."

Flashing his palms, he gestures that he means you no harm. "I wanted to apologize. I mean, I wanted to the first day I got back, but thought maybe I should give it a little while. Let you have your space."

You finger the plastic wrap around the bottle you hold.

"I wasn't myself. Yes, I knew what I was doing, and I knew that it was wrong, but the benzos..." he sighs and shakes his head. "I've been clean for awhile now. Every day is an uphill battle, but that day out in the ambulance bay... It was a wake-up call. I hope you know that it wasn't entirely about you. It was about me being selfish."

You toy with the twist-off cap on the bottle.

"I'm so sorry that I ever scared you. I hate myself for it. For that, for the way I hurt my wife, disrespected my family and myself..."

He glances up to you after studying his hands for a moment. "I don't expect you to forgive me. I don't know that I'm even asking for it. I just wanted to apologize. Try and make amends if I even can at this point. You were there for me at my lowest point and instead of being grateful, I took advantage. I'm so sorry that I did."

You take a small step forward. "Maybe I will in time." You twist the cap all the way off, then tighten it again. "Did you tell Abby?"

He nods. "Everything. I came so close to losing her because of it. But if I'm going to hold myself accountable, then no more lies. Y'know?"

You nod. "I'm glad that it seems like things are on the mend for you."

He nods toward the doorway, where the ED lies. "You, too. I mean about you and Robby." He hangs his head. "I drove you right into his arms, didn't I?"

You chew your lip. "Sorta. It might've happened anyway. At least something good came out of it," you say with a light chuckle.

He lifts his head again and forces a smile. "The two of you seem happy."

"We are," you confirm. "We... We live together now. And we're trying."

His brows furrow. "Trying for..." he nods. "Ah. That."

You turn toward the doorway. "Well, I should probably..."

Just as you're about to step over the threshold, he rises. "Just so you know—"

You turn around.

"It wasn't... The way I felt wasn't entirely due to the drugs."

You frown slightly. "Have you told that to—"

He runs a hand through his black tresses. "She wasn't happy to hear it, I can tell you that much."

You waver on your feet, unsure of how to craft a response.

"I don't know if that makes things better or worse, but it was something I felt like I should let you know."

You force a smile. "Thank you for being honest."

He sits again. "I'll let you get back to it, then."

"See you around," you say with an awkward wave before finally turning to leave.

Pungent, searing onions pierce the atmosphere. Feet kicked up, you wrap your hands around a glass of chilled white wine and settle into Robby's expansive couch.

"You sure you're doing alright in there?" You call out, listening for his rummaging in the kitchen.

"Yeah, 'f course babe. Don't worry your pretty little head," he replies, sweet but distracted.

A frown twists your lips, though you decide to leave him be, stomach rumbling at the garlic he's now added to the dish.

You try to relax, though a lack of Robby is making it difficult. You take in the low light of the living room, the secluded, large windows of Robby's rural cabin.

A 45 minute drive from the city, he'd purchased the home during his sabbatical. You look out the sliding glass door, where you know a calm river greeted him each morning.

The thought fills you with peace, tears glossing your eyes at the thought of who he was before he took a break. He's still not perfect, but he's so much better. You want to see him through it all.

"Smells great, Mikey," you mention, craning your neck to try and sneak a glimpse of him.

"Thhhanks, babe…" he trails off, distraction lacing his tone.

Your brow quirks, and you can't help but pad into the kitchen. It's a bit of a trek from his living room, the square footage of this place nothing to turn your head at.

"You sure you're okay?" You ask softly, and he jumps.

"Shit," he whispers, placing a large palm on his chest. "Scared me, baby," he says, but doesn't make eye contact.

Guilt pools in your stomach for scaring him, your eyes darting to the pan sizzling on the stove.

"Sorry, honey," you smile, softly nudging your way into the space.

You set your wine glass down with a soft clink, and press your hands into his lower back. You pinch the excess skin at his hips, reveling in his little flinch.

"Hey!" He playfully groans, prodding at the searing vegetables in the pan.

"Need any help in here?" You prop your chin on his back, arms wrapping around his sweet tummy.

You silently pray he can't feel the rapid beating of your heart pressing against him, the sheer proximity enough to make you dizzy.

He shakes his head, but nothing comes out of his mouth. This is his telltale sign that he's not communicating what he needs. He's working on it, but he was so excited to have you this weekend, to make you this meal.

You understand, but you're not standing for it. Your fingernails dig into the plush of his belly, giving him a menacing pinch. His spatula clatters against the counter, his hands white knuckling the marble counter top.

"Baby…" you mumble against his back, "can I help?" It's quiet, neutral and unassuming.

He shrugs, shaking his head again. You huff, pressing a light kiss on his shoulder.

"Promise, baby," he mutters, giving you a small smile.

He reaches for your wine glass, placing it back in your hands and gently ushering you out of the kitchen.

"Go sit," he encourages with a pat on the ass. "I'm fine, promise."

You look back at him over your shoulder, an unsure smile on your lips as you pad back over to the couch.

You curl into the elaborate furniture, the plush cushions enveloping you. Your lips find the rim of your glass, your eyes straining to see as much of him as you can.

Your heart drops, though, when an unmistakable burning scent fills the air. You're on your feet quickly, rushing into the kitchen to find Robby, once again gripping the counter.

This time, he's hunched over a bit more, deep breaths wracking his chest over the pan of now burnt vegetables. He doesn't seem to register you, and you're frozen for a moment, unsure how to proceed.

You decide on a slow step, the creak in the floorboard alerting him to your presence. He jolts up, his face red and blotchy, eyes glossy. Your heart clutches at the sight, and you reach a hand out.

He tenses up at the action, but you persist. You lay a gentle hand on his forearm, and he rests back onto the counter.

"I'm sorry," he chokes out. "Should've said yes, I'm sorry."

You frown, stroking his arm.

"It's okay, you wanted to do it. I understand," you say, inching closer to him. He allows it. "I appreciate you."

He melts at this, and your belly warms at his small smile. His eyes find the ground beneath him, and you take this as an opportunity to act, before he can notice.

You slink over to the cupboard, grabbing a short glass and filling it up with ice. Twisting open the lid of his favorite scotch, the liquid glugs into the glass. The sound piques his interest, head flitting up to see what you're doing.

You walk toward him as he nears the edge of the kitchen where it meets the living room. He accepts the drink, lifting his brows while taking a sip. He doesn't fully give in so easily, though.

He rests a shoulder on the archway of the kitchen, glaring up at you through the you knew he'd refuse to leave you alone with a running stove and oven.

"Let me help you?" You attempt to meet in the middle.

You watch him rattle the idea around in his brain, shaking his head from side to side as he contemplates. Your heart picks up at the sight of him, warmth swirling in your belly at his sleepy eyes, his angular nose.

"Mkay," he relents, setting his scotch down next to your wine.

He wraps his arms around your waist, pressing your back to his chest. He rests his chin on your shoulder, and you melt back into him. His warmth is all encompassing, and you have to will yourself to stand strong.

He walks with you to the fridge, where you grab a new onion and fresh bulb of garlic. You're quick at work, dicing and slicing the vegetables to sear them anew.

The wretched burning smell is quickly overpowered by the aromatic scent once again. Michael relaxes behind you, pinching your hip slightly before checking the meat that's braising in the oven.

You allow yourself a peek behind your shoulder, the slight bend in his torso allowing you a perfect view of his backside. He always claims it's unimpressive, especially compared to yours, yet you can't help but enjoy every bit of him.

You show him so, turning to swat him on the ass with your kitchen towel. He stands up starkly, hands on his hips as he turns toward you, a smile stretching across his face. It's tight lipped, annoyed, but loving all the same.

Your smile is sparkling, and you revel in the pink tint of his cheeks. He saunters back to you, pulling him back to his chest whilst you move the vegetable pan off the burner.

"Thank you, baby," he croons in your ear, placing sweet, slow, seductive kisses along your neck.

There's a flutter between your legs as you settle into him, your head falling back onto his shoulder at his touch.

"Mikey…" you moan, squeezing your thighs together as his hands run down your waist, your hips.

He kneads your plush skin, greedy fingers squeezing and pulling you closer to him.

"So pretty, baby," he mutters, placing one last kiss on your neck. "Gotta get the pasta ready."

He moves to the cabinet, a burst of cold air rushing through you at his absence. You lean down to grab a large pot, shock reverberating through you when he gets his payback, landing a loud smack on your ass.

"Michael!" You squeal, standing up to reach for your stinging behind.

He just shrugs, though his cheeks have been flushed this whole time.

"Can you blame me? You're so pretty, baby," he shoots you his best puppy dog eyes, his lips in a soft little pout.

"I could say the same for you," you quip back, filling up the pot with water.

You place it on the stove, burner turned on all the way to ensure a quick boiling point. A soft silence settles over you two, then, no longer a need to frantically flit around the shared space.

You find your wine glass, lifting it to your lips and taking a slow sip, your eyes never leaving his over the rim of the glass. You lean back on the counter, and he does the same, taking a sip of his scotch.

Tension settles between you, thick like rising steam. You take a deep inhale, heart racing at the mere sight of him. You trail your eyes up and down, committing his look tonight to memory.

He's got jeans on, they're snug, yet low on his hips. His white button up strains against his belly, and you sink your teeth into your lower lip. His sleeves are rolled up to the elbow, and a bead of sweat pricks your forehead.

You look down at your own outfit, a navy blue dress that fits around your waist and flows down to your ankles, adorned with white polka dots, matched with white kitten heels.

Your eyes find his, just to see him devouring you the same way you did earlier. Your cheeks burn at the heat of Robby's gaze, worrying if this is too much. Your relationship is still new, still not official, though you've been slowly embedding yourselves into each other's lives.

Like tonight, for example. You fit into this secluded space, your ability to help him tonight proof of that.

"You look so pretty tonight, by the way," he murmurs, arms crossing over his chest.

Your heart shocks itself back to life at his compliment, and your tummy twists.

"Thank you, handsome," you smile sweetly.

He smiles, and it's sweet, genuine with no underlying teasing underneath it. He moves closer to you, your heart pumping rapidly in your chest. He places a hand around your waist as he reaches for the spaghetti noodles, cracking them in half before throwing them into the boiling water.

You flinch at the action, having totally forgotten what you were in here for.

"Oh! I could have gotten that," you mutter sheepishly.

He just shakes his head, turning your back towards his chest and walking you back to the living room.

"No, baby," he says, guiding you back to the couch. "I can take it from here, you relax, okay?" He tries to sit you down, to give you a kiss. You don't let him off so easily.

"Can't relax without you," you mutter, running your hands up his bare forearms.

He shudders as you drag your nails over his skin, and you bask in the goosebumps popping up on his skin. His head hangs back, giving you an elongated view of his neck, his Adam's apple bobbing on full display.

You place a soft kiss to the pointy skin, and he shudders once more.

"Fine, baby," he relents, and you knew you'd get your way. He swats your ass once more as you hop back to the kitchen. "C'mon, brat."

- Dinner was outstanding, more than anything you thought Robby could cook for you, even with your help. He'd pick the steaks out, seasoned and braised them, all while tossing together a tomato pasta sauce, cooking noodles, and chopping up ingredients for a salad.

He's now finally joined you on the couch, your legs propped up on his lap, refills of both your drinks in your respective hands. His large, calloused hand strokes up and down your shins, and the motion almost puts you to sleep.

"Feels nice, Mikey," you mumble, resting your head on the back of the couch.

"Yeah?" He asks, his tone light. "Makin' you feel good?"

You nod, the condescending lilt to his words burning deep in your stomach. It mirrors the way he speaks when he's deep inside you, and you can't help but press your thighs together once more.

He knows this, a small smirk playing on his lips as you squirm under his touch.

"This is so pretty," he mumbles, toying with the hemline of your dress. You want nothing more than for him to pull it up, drag you by your legs and have his way with you.

You want it so much that you kick your feet a little, twisting your body to give him as much access to you as possible. It's not the most comfortable position, but you'd rather deal with it than have him stop touching you.

He notices, though, because of course he does, and tosses your legs off him anyways. You scoff, heart sinking at the action. He sees the pout forming on your lips, a sad smile on his lips.

"C'mon, my girl, up," he pats his lap before reaching for you, essentially manhandling you onto his lap.

You allow it, grateful to be able to turn off the decision making part of your brain. You let him maneuver you onto him, knees hitting the couch on either side of his lap.

You straddle him, not sinking your weight down fully just yet. He's surprised by this, head cocking to the side, a smirk twisting his lips.

"What?" You shrug, like nothing's wrong. "You made me dinner just so you could get in my pants? Woooooow. Michael," you tease him, knowing full well you want him just as much as he wants you.

His hands grip your ass, squeezing and kneading, giving a light slap once again. You squeal, hips thrusting of their own volition. You feel a wet spot start to pool in your panties, desperate for friction. You won't let him win that easily, though.

He pulls your hips closer to him, your center pressed against his chest, his face in your tummy, your chest. He looks up at you, chin resting on your stomach.

"Not gonna sit on me, baby? Really?" He asks, soft and sweet.

"Nope!" You chirp, the heat burning in you making it harder to keep up this act.

"You don't want it?" He asks, expecting a predictable answer, expecting you to drop your core onto him and let him take you.

You decide to take his bait, shaking your head no, a proud smile playing on your face. Your heart pounds at the surprise seizing his features.

"Really?" His brows raise.

You've pushed it before with Robby, but due to the early nature of your relationship, it's never gone this far. Never have you denied him yourself, nor denied yourself him, because, as much as you pretend, this is a two way street.

"Really, 'm totally fine," you chirp, and you see his eyes darken. "In fact, is there dessert?" You twist your torso, going to move off of him, but he grips your waist even tighter.

Hook, line, sinker.

"Totally fine?" He grits, hands moving lower. "You mean, if I get my hands on your pretty panties, you won't be drooling for me?"

You bite your lip to stifle a whimper, body on fire at not only your proximity, but lack thereof. The distance between your lap and his feels like miles away, but his hands on you are electrifying.

Still, you shake your head no, defiant despite knowing exactly what he'll find. His hands travel farther and farther up your thighs, circling around to your backside, pushing your dress up over your hips.

Your pink panties give you away instantly, wet spot big and dark. His brows furrow, lips forming into an 'o' as he takes you in.

"Oh, baby," he coos, sliding the fabric to the side. "Fuck, drippin' for me, angel."

You squeal at his words, vulnerability seizing you as his thick fingers press against the damp fabric. You clench against nothing as his fingertips collect your wetness, running through your silky folds.

"Feels so good, Mikey," you whisper, grinding your hips to further the friction.

"Ooohohoho," he chuckles. "Now we want it," he teases, recalling your earlier defiance.

"You know I always did," you whine, giving him your widest eyes, the ones that get him every time.

You're proven right once more as he stands, your legs still wrapped firmly around him. He carries you to the bedroom, a large, cozy bed taking up most of the room.

The windows are floor to ceiling, and the late evening sun sets in pinks and oranges around you two. He tosses you onto the bed, and your heart picks up as you look up at him.

His eyes bore into yours as he settles a knee on the bed, his fingers reaching up to unbutton his shirt. You quickly sit up, folding your legs underneath yourself as you kneel, taking his buttons into your own hands.

You indulge in his half naked frame, trailing a finger down his chest, past his belly all the way to the waistband of his pants. You pause there, grazing your nose against his ever so slightly. His jaw goes slack, panting breaths fanning over your face.

Your heart pounds, tummy twisting with warm desire. You unlatch his belt, finally pressing your lips to his. He melts into you, lips crushing yours as he pushes you back on the bed.

He slides his pants down the rest of the way, boxers coming with it. It's always on brand for him to skip the middle man.

He shakes his head incredulously as he crawls back on the bed. He gestures to your fully clothed form.

"How's this fair?" He poises, and you can't help but giggle.

This gets a smile out of him, inching closer to you on the bed. He wraps his arms around your thighs, pulling you the rest of the way to him until his hips are flush with yours.

You whimper as your sensitive core hits his, his hard cock pressed against you. You wiggle your hips, trying desperately to feel something before he releases you from the restraints of your clothing.

He coos, tutting his tongue and swatting your inner thigh. You squeal, lifting your hips up as his hands pull your underwear down your legs. He tosses them across the room, but not without taking a quick sniff.

"Michael!" You scoff, a small smile creeping on your face. "You perv!"

He smiles at your teasing, tapping his cock onto your clit. You flinch at the contact, a low chuckle rumbling from his chest.

"Can't help it, baby, pussy's so sweet," he mutters, lifting your dress over your head to get you the rest of the way there.

The warmth from the sunset radiates from the windows, coating you in a golden sheen. You can almost feel the rays through the glass as your naked frame settles into the bed.

Insecurity settles deep in your stomach as he takes a moment to stare. He's slack jawed, eyes trailing from your face all the way down to the apex of your thighs, and back up again.

"You're incredibly beautiful, I don't tell you that enough," he mutters, pressing a finger to your entrance.

You moan, arching your back from the bed at the intrusion.

"So tight, shit," he whispers, and you clench around his digit. "No idea how you take my cock every time."

That last part seems more to himself than anybody else, and you can't help but agree. Taking in his length that sits right in front of you, you swallow. It's considerable, especially knowing the guys you've dated in the past.

His finger is fully inside you now, down to the knuckle. You whine, wiggling your hips to add friction. He coos, shushing you before pulling out and adding in a second finger.

You mewl at the stretch, cheeks heating up at the gush of your wetness around his fingers.

"Y'always get so wet for me, fuck," he whispers, jaw going slack at the squelch of your pussy.

"It's so much," you whine, embarrassment creeping up your spine. "'m sorry."

He stops at this, fingers halting inside of you. He quirks a brow, and you feel yourself shrink under his gaze.

"What was that?" He asks, his voice testy. "You're sorry?"

You nod, heart pounding deep and loud in your chest.

"I'm ruining your sheets," you whimper, and he swats your inner thigh.

You squeal at the sharp contact, squeezing your eyes shut.

"Not ruining anything, sweet girl, y'hear me?" He picks up the pace of his fingers once more, massaging your sweet spot with each thrust. "Could never ruin a thing, I promise."

You nod your head, his words shining bright within you. A white hot sensation burns in your lower belly, your blissful edge nearing with each motion.

"Michaelll," you whine, throwing your arms over your face.

"Shhh, I know sweetie, I know," he whispers, maintaining his agonizing pace. "We're gonna get you nice and stretched out for me, get you nice and ready to take me, yeah?"

You whine, wriggling in his grasp, arching your hips off the bed to be closer to him.

He pushes you back down with a firm hand, and a tut of his tongue.

"Nuh-uh, baby, you're gonna sit still and take it like a good girl, hm?" He raises a brow, and all you can do is nod, the pleasure building up to its peak.

Your orgasm is achingly close, your pussy clenching down on his fingers with all its might. He laughs at this, at the heightened resistance his fingers meet inside of you.

Your orgasm hits, then, a blinding hot wave of pleasure sweeping you out to sea. Robby unravels you, continues his brutal pace until your legs are shaking, your breath small, whiny gasps.

"Good girl, good girl," he repeats as he continues to work you out. It's so genuine, your heart clutches.

Tears prick your eyes, caught in a perfect intersection of his praise and the overstimulation. He nods, kissing your cheek as his fingers slow. He pulls out gently, you still whimper at the loss.

Your pussy pulses through the aftershocks, warmth blooming bright in your stomach. Robby nudges your cheek with the point of his nose, lightly grazing your soft skin.

"You ready for me, baby?" He asks, pressing a swift kiss to your cheek.

You nod against his lips, and he lines himself up to your entrance. He slides his head up and down your folds, collecting your wetness before pushing in.

His tip breaches your hole, and you feel instantly hazy. Your eyes flutter shut, lashes kissing your cheeks as he pushes even deeper.

Your jaw falls slack, gripping his hips, relishing the plush skin there as you pull him ever more closer to you, legs spreading even wider to accommodate his large size.

Taking him has always been a challenge, though you're never one to back down. Soon enough, he's buried in you, hips flush together. He sneaks his hands under your legs, pulling them up to his shoulders. Your shins dangle down his back, allowing him to push even deeper.

"Ohhh yes," your breathing is shaky, his tip nudging your sweet spot.

"I know, baby, I know," he mutters, pulling out slightly just to thrust back in.

You whimper as his hips hit your ass, a wet 'plap' echoing through the room. The feeling of him is intoxicating, the smell of him invading your nose and making you dizzy.

Your head falls back on the pillow, eyes fluttering shut as he continues to snap his hips. He finds a steady rhythm, his length pistoning through you like a bullet.

"Feels so good," he grunts, thrusts growing sloppy. "Always so fucking good with you, baby."

He turns his head to press a sweet kiss to your ankle, maneuvering your legs back around his waist.

"Never been this good before," he mutters. "Never."

His words knock the wind out of you. Things are still so new that you never really know what he's thinking. You love when he's like this, sensitive and vulnerable and unable to stop his mouth from running.

The telltale sign of your release creeps up once again. You're more sensitive as your second orgasm approaches, positively gushing around him.

Your juices flow down your ass and onto the bedsheets, the familiar embarrassment returning. Robby catches it before you can spiral, a sharp shake of his head keeping the tears at bay.

"Don't even go there, baby," he grumbles beneath his breath. "Get me as wet as you need to, 's okay."

The tears slip anyway, soft streams rolling down your cheeks. He kisses them away, shushing you as he continues to take you apart.

"You're okay, baby, we're okay. It's all okay," he whispers, kissing all over your face. "It's so okay, so good," he mumbles aimlessly, "so good for me, gonna cum, okay? Gonna cum inside, oh God please can I cum inside?"

You nod breathlessly, tears still spilling, a quiet cry escaping your chest.

"So fucking pretty when you cry, baby, fuck, 's gonna make me cum," he groans, halting his hips against yours as he spills inside you.

You fall apart at the same time, your entire body seizing against his. He brings his mouth to yours, brows furrowed as he parts your lips with his tongue. He kisses you through it, shushing you and stroking your hair.

You shiver and shake as he thrusts through it, gripping at his biceps to anchor you.

"That's it, you got it, you got it," he whispers, bringing your ankle back to his lips for another sweet kiss.

He pulls out slowly, collapsing next to you. Wasting no time, he pulls you into him, wrapping yourself around him so he can bring you to the bathroom to get cleaned up.

There's a shift between you two, you can feel it as he lays down next to you. The air is thicker, more intense. You lean into it, hands immediately finding his bicep and sinking your nails in.

He hisses at the contact, furrowing his brows before pulling you in for a sweet kiss. You melt into him, his firm grip allowing sleep to fall over you, content and in his arms.

The start of the week at PTMC is, as always, loud, chaotic, and smelly. Though, the influx of patients is not what's on your mind most, even though it should be.

You're eager to find Robby, missing him already, though you spent the whole weekend together.

You fill your locker and make quick work of rushing onto the scene, finding your guy immediately. You walk with him alongside a gurney from the ambulance bay as he describes the state of the new patient.

A child with bruises littering their skin and a head injury from a fall at the skate park nearby. This is fairly routine, and you go to retrieve the proper paperwork when he gives you a small tug on your elbow.

Your heart picks up in speed at the touch, albeit professional.

"We don't need you here," he mutters, and your heart drops.

After this weekend, the words feel like poison bubbling in your gut. You jerk your head back to look at him, brows furrowed in surprise and hurt.

He clocks it immediately. You watch his eyes shift momentarily before finding his work zone once again. You feel like you're drowning, like he was throwing you out to sea.

It's just your job, you know this. It doesn't stop the ache from nearly splitting your heart in two.

"It doesn't look like an abuse case," he eases your professional worries, and it helps, though it's not enough to quell your personal ones. "I'll call you if it ends up going that route."

You nod slowly, your ears flooded with anxious noise. You feel as if you're traipsing through water, movements fluid and languid, like you're not even here.

The juxtaposition of the Robby from this weekend and the Robby standing in front of you nearly gives you whiplash, and you're unable to take your eyes off of him.

"Go work with Langdon," he nods across the E.R, and you turn your head.

He's in Trauma 1, barking orders and checking a young child's pupils. You chew on your bottom lip in contemplation, turning your head back to find his face a hell of a lot closer than it was when you looked away.

"Robby-" you start, trying to knock some sense into him.

"What?" He quips. It's short, punctuated, and thoroughly pissed off.

This sparks something within you, a fiery combativeness that you can't seem to find the off switch to.

"Really? Langdon?" You prop your hand up on your hip, rolling his eyes.

He scoffs at your attitude, and 48 hours ago, you know he'd have you over his knee for this later.

Now? You're not so sure. The uncertainty knocks you off kilter, your legs like jelly beneath you.

You knew this was a possibility when you'd started seeing him, you've worked with him for five years now. The mood swings aren't surprising. What is surprising, is the fact that he's never taken it out on you before.

It's terrifying.

"You'll be of better use there," he clips, your heart sinking to the bottom of your stomach.

"But, Robby-" you try, but he cuts you off.

"Now," he punctuates, and leaves the room.

The kid Langdon was with has been discharged, though a pile of CPS paperwork is going to loom high on your desk for the next few days.

As you scan the busy room for more cases to jump on, you spot Robby, still with the same child.

Your brow quirks, making your way over to the scene. He seems to be in some sort of verbal altercation with the mother, who is getting closer and closer to Robby, unkind words spewing from her mouth.

"I'm going to sue you, and I'm going to sue this entire fucking hospital!" She shouts.

Robby has two defensive hands up at his shoulders, and you can tell he's struggling to maintain his composure.

You slink in between him and this woman, a public service smile plastering your face.

"Hi!" You chirp, giving her your name and a hand to shake. "I'm our pediatric specialist. What seems to be the problem here?"

Your tone and demeanor soften the woman, a skill you've honed over half a decade of working this position. Really, all these parents want is for someone to listen. That's where you come in.

You shoot Robby a look as you guide the ever calming woman away from the scene, allowing them to work. He looks sheepish, eyes not leaving yours even after he moves back to the child on the hospital bed.

A sense of pride floods your veins at his battered expression, a smile reading 'I told you so' spreading your lips.

Around 2:30, you're able to steal ten minutes in the break room for a 'lunch' break. Your teeth sink into a granola bar, your chin in your palm as you allow yourself to zone out for a moment.

Since your earlier interaction, you've quietly eyed Robby's every move, tracking the way he darts from one patient to the other with learned ease. Not once had he looked at you, not even to spare a glance.

It's starting to chip away at you, withering you down to your rawest parts. You decided to give him the rest of the morning to reset- knowing the transition from his cabin back to reality can be tough for him.

His behavior today surpasses that, though. Blatantly ignoring you all morning- not letting you help, assigning you to cases with Langdon, of all people.

You've got nothing against the guy, you'd even consider him a friend. It still doesn't explain why Robby would hand you off to him instead of keeping you to himself.

By the time you've scarfed down a semblance of food, you're angry all over again. You march back out into the Pitt, greeted by all the familiar sounds and smells.

You wrinkle your nose, spotting Robby at the charting station. His glasses sit low on his nose, fingers clacking on the keyboard.

You stop in your fiery tracks as you take him in, heart pattering against your chest like a caged bird. It knocks you off kilter for a moment, the mere sight of him standing there.

His head snaps up instantly, and you roll your eyes, annoyed once again at how deeply he feels you. You stomp over, plopping yourself on the stool at the station opposite him.

You don't even pretend to look at the computer, folding your hands on the counter as you glare at him. His eyes divert from the screen to you, still glancing over his glasses.

His brows are arched, an expression on his face that, at home, usually reads as 'I'm done with your shit.'

But you're not at home. You're at your jobs, and the feeling is mutual.

"What's going on with you?" You ask, clipped and blunt.

He flinches at your brusque tone, still not fully used to your direct way of communicating. You don't let him get away with anything. He needs it, even if he doesn't like it all the time.

He averts his gaze, tapping his fingers against the keyboard once again.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he mutters, and you're seeing red.

You roll your eyes, wrapping your fingers around his wrist and dragging him through the E.R.

"Are you kidding-" he begins to complain, but you shove him into the ambulance bay.

"Do not whine at me, Robinavitch," you hold up a finger, and he relaxes just slightly. "Don't lie to me, either," you prop a hand on your hips, eyes big and sad. "What's going on?"

He's quiet for a moment, pensive and sad. The air hangs thick between you, flooded with the words you're too scared to say.

"It-" he starts, but you stomp down a foot.

"Do not tell me it's nothing, again, Michael!" You whine.

It's petulant, bratty, even. He's seen this part of you. It's not that you're worried about. What worries you is the pained crease resting between his eyebrows.

"What is it?" You whisper, heart pounding against your chest.

You're officially considering worst case scenarios. You lean into the anxiety, let it consume you whole.

"I don't know if this is working," he whispers. It's broken, his eyes sad. You feel your heart lurch at his words.

"What do you mean?" You ask, voice low.

"I think we may be taking things too fast," he mutters, and the words dart around in your brain like a pinball. They just don't make sense.

"What is going too fast for you?" You ask, the words wobbling from your lips.

He scoffs, shaking his head and avoiding your gaze, his telltale sign that he is not planning on telling you the answer.

"You're really going to let this go, just like that?" You ask, the reality of the situation settling over you like a cold, wet blanket.

"I didn't realize there was much to let go," he mutters.

You scoff, rolling your eyes. Your bold facade does nothing for the pounding of your heart against your rib cage, each throb a chip in your armor.

Logically, you knew you'd be getting this version of Robby eventually. You've worked with him for five years. You'd been there for PittFest, Adamson's death, but also for all the people he'd saved, the children's lives you'd changed together.

Then, two months ago happened. A shared beer on a late night after a long shift leading to a salacious make out against the hood of his truck, leading to dates and cabin trips.

You recount this past weekend, now in more detail. The nights you spent in his arms, in his bed, in his space. The breakfasts you'd shared as the sun crept through the windows. It was glaringly, achingly intimate.

Embarrassment burns low in your belly, acidic and tangy. as you study his face.

"I know you don't mean that," you power through, refusing to take your eyes off him. "Come find me when you're ready to talk about how you're actually feeling."

You slide off the stool, leaving him to stew in his own bad attitude.

The painful adrenaline coursing through you gets you to the end of the day. Shift hand off goes relatively smooth, essentially updating Abbot on all of your ongoing cases

Before you can turn to leave, he stops you with a quiet, 'uhm…'

You turn, immediately receptive to the shift in his tone. It's no longer work related, you can tell by the lost puppy look in his eye.

"Jack…" you start, inching closer.

"How's Robby?" He asks, and your heart stops.

"Not great, actually. Why?" You cross your arms in defense.

"I-I think I may have said something to freak him out," he confesses.

You arch a brow, heart ricocheting off your ribcage. It's all you can manage to not lose your mind.

"I'm sure you're aware of his…uhm, history," he starts, and loose pieces of this puzzle start to form together in your brain.

"The 'seven-week-itch'," you remark, recalling years worth of gossip of Robby's dating habits.

"And, how long have you two been seeing each other?" He supplements, and the final piece clicks into place.

"Two months," you whisper.

Eight weeks, more specifically. You had both let it fly right by you, not even noticing the passage of time.

"And I made a joke about it," Jack says, guilt lacing his tone. "On Sunday, after you guys had gotten home."

You pinch the bridge of your nose, squeezing your eyes shut so you don't take your anger out on the wrong subject.

Jack is a dear friend, to both you and Robby. You know he'd never intentionally say something hurtful. You also know that Robby's triggers, while on the mend, are still raw and vulnerable.

"Okay," you sigh. "Thank you for telling me, Jack. I appreciate the honesty."

You mean it, because, although it's not the best case scenario, you now know how to tackle it accurately.

"For sure," he nods, guilt spreading across his soft features. "I'm sorry, bud."

You smile softly at the nickname he'd bestowed upon you at your first handoff.

"It's okay, I can handle it," you assure him, before spinning on your heel in the direction of the lockers.

Robby's not there, and you curse softly under your breath. You make quick work of gathering your things and running out to the parking lot.

You catch his broad frame across the parking lot, and you break into a jog, catching up with him swiftly.

"Robby!" You call, slowing your pace as you reach him, and you can feel the iciness radiating off of him.

He stops, takes a deep in hale, and turns to stare daggers at you. You take a step back at the look in his eyes, a dark, distant sadness to them that stuns your nervous system.

"Is this about the seven week itch?" You ask, and now it's his turn to take a step back.

The space between you is deep and vast, an ocean of swirling emotions. His chest begins to heave, and for a brief moment, guilt bubbles low in your belly.

Maybe you took it too far, but you're nearing your point of no return. He can deal with it.

You adjust, rolling your shoulders back- standing taller, unafraid. You stare down the empty barrels of his eyes, his teeth sinking into his bottom lip.

"The what?" Is all he manages, and you scoff.

"Really, Robinavitch? That's how you want to play this?" You ask, giving him another shot.

He shrugs, and you just fold your arms across your chest.

"We've been dating for eight weeks, dummy. Jack told me about what he said. Is that really what this is about?" You ask, rage boiling from the tips of your toes to the top of your head.

He laughs sardonically, a furious smile painting his lips.

"This isn't about Jack, or the-what the hell did you call it?" His tone is gruff, and he runs a palm down his face.

"Your seven-week-itch, Michael? Ringing a bell?" You poise, brows raised. "I'm not an idiot, you know. I know I'm not the first girl in this department that you've dated, hell, I'm probably not the youngest, either," this part is a little hyperbolic, but you wouldn't be surprised. "People talk, and if Jack's joking about it, that all but confirms the gossip."

He scoffs, hands coming up to the nape of his neck.

"Fuck," he growls, and you flinch.

You watch him falter at that, and it pauses you for a moment. Each beat of your heart is a throb of affection, for him, for your relationship- or what's left of it.

"You heard all of that and still wanted to be with me?" He asks, and it's insecure as much as it's defensive.

"Yes," you breathe, your heart clutching. "Because I got to know you for myself, and I really like the Michael I know. It doesn't feel like I'm talking to him right now."

He scoffs, walls immediately shooting back up.

"I'm not one of your case kids, y'know," he remarks, and you roll your eyes.

"Okay, so stop acting like a child," you quip back, not missing a beat.

An incredulous chuckle wrestles itself from his chest, eyes glossing over. In this agonizing, purgatorial waiting game, you've stopped feeling sorry for speaking your mind.

"I can't," he mutters, eyes focused on the ground.

You see the wet drops fall from his eye and hit the pavement, fighting your resolve down to the bone.

"I'm sorry, it's not fair," he croaks, and rage pounds in your ears. "But I just can't. I think you need to find someone better."

Your heart burns, tears stinging the backs of your eye ducts.

"But I don't want that," you grumble, pouting your lip. "I want you. Do I not get a say in this?"

He shakes his head, and annoyance pricks at your stomach.

"Really? I don't get a say in my own relationship?" He flinches at that word, and it's like a knife to your gut.

"Relationship?" He repeats, and you throw up a disbelieving hand.

"What the hell else are you calling this?" You ask him, voice raising.

"Of course I'm calling it a relationship I just don't think I've ever actually…" he trails off, and you nod, not needing the rest of that sentence.

"Got it," you press your lips together, egging him to say more.

"I don't know if a relationship with me is what you want," he mutters.

"Well, I know for sure that it is," you stand firm, despite his denial. "What do you want?"

The question hangs in the air like a bomb, prompt and deadly.

"I don't know," he says, and it's the final nail.

"I guess that's our answer, then, isn't it?" You croak, not daring to look at him as you walk past him to your own vehicle.

"Congrats on a new record, Robinavitch," you shout across the parking lot, slinking into your car and slamming the door.

The tears are immediate, flowing down your cheeks, smudging your eyeliner. Your hands white knuckle the steering wheel, chest heaving as your sobs rack through you.

You knew seeing Robby wasn't going to be necessarily easy. He's your colleague, an attending at the hospital you work at, not to mention multiple decades your senior. Plus, everything else.

You're sure of your choices, though, and it's agonizing to know that he's not.

Your mind goes back to this past weekend, how sweet and assuring he was, how safe he made you feel. The difference between that Robby and this one is enough to give you whiplash.

A new set of cries strangle you, clutching your stomach and wringing it out like a dirty dish rag.

You lift a shaky finger, pressing the on button of your car. You let the cool air hit you, drying the wet streaks on your cheeks.

Your veins rage with a cocktail of shame, hurt, and embarrassment. You should have listened.

You should have listened to Princess and Perlah when they dropped you subtle hints on his dating life. You should have listened to Trinity when she told you this was crazy. You should have listened to Dana when she told you he'd break your heart.

Daryl couldn't stop thinking about you, and he looked for you every opportunity he got. When a walker resembled you with similar clothing or hair, he had to make sure it wasn't you, just in case. His heart would jump into his throat and pound loudly in his ears until he knew it wasn't you, and his fear fell away the moment the walker dropped lifelessly to the floor.  

When he couldn't finish searching the shipping containers at Terminus, Daryl convinced himself that you were gone. That you were still in prison, trapped, or suffered a worse fate out there on your own. After losing Beth, Daryl couldn't get his hopes up anymore; he needed to mourn. 

You were out of a run with Deanna's sons, Aiden and Spencer, which should've been a day's job at most, but unfortunately, when the overrun warehouse plunged into darkness, the three of you were gone for five days. Ruthlessly and strategically fighting your way out with no guns or dropping a single supply; luckily, you were experienced and driven enough to make sure the three of you would make it out alive.

Arriving back in Alexandria in the middle of the night wasn't what you wanted, but another night of sleeping in the car with two brothers who had a serious snoring problem would've killed you off for good. 

"We're done for today." Aiden smiled, wiping some blood off your forehead.

You smiled back, "I think we're done for a long while after that," you managed to laugh lightly before saying good night and going back to your home, dragging your feet, feeling sore and tired.

You climbed into bed, too tired to erase the four days' worth of blood, dirt, and grime built up on your body and face, and went to sleep; little did you know Daryl was three doors away, alive and under a roof not too different from your own.

When you first walked into Alexandrea and went through Deanna's gruelling interview process, you felt reluctant to share your story with her. Still, when you were promised that Aaron would do his best to track down your people, you couldn't stop yourself from telling her everything.

"Daryl is hard to figure out at first," you smiled as you made yourself comfortable on Deanna's couch, enjoying her lit fire, "he doesn't let people in."

"He let you in, all the way it seems," Deanna responded, her gaze intense.

You nodded your head, "Yeah, but it took him a long time to trust me, we've been together since the start... we're always together, this is the longest we've been apart."

"Is he a good man?"

"Without a doubt. Daryl and that group are my family, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for them."

When you were on that run with Aiden and Spencer, Aaron lured Daryl and his group back to Alexandria. Whilst they were rightfully wary after what they went through at the prison and terminus, when Aaron name-dropped you and gave them a picture of you looking alive and happy, they agreed to go with him to this new community.

Deanna put every one of them through the same process, shoving her camcorder in their presence, asking them question after question, but it was Daryl who was the most impatient and on edge; unable to keep still. 

"Where is she?!" Daryl grumbled,  "Am gettin' sick of waitin!"

"She's on a supply run with my two sons," Deanna replied calmly with a smile, "she'll be back soon."

"Where is she?!" Daryl repeated, pacing around the room.

"An old warehouse, a couple of miles out, they are clearing through it and are coming back," she sighed, feeling slightly anxious at the thought of her sons not returning, "if she isn't back by tomorrow night, I'll send for others to search for her.”

When your eyes opened the next morning, you forced yourself into your shower, scrubbing away the dirt caked on your face and neck before digging the dried blood from underneath your fingernails. When massaging your scalp under the warm running water, scrubbing in the shampoo you took from the warehouse, you could hear Daryl's voice, calling out your name. 

At first, you thought you were still dreaming, trapped in a nightmare or experiencing another reality similar to what life was once like, but when you finished your shower, got dressed and could still hear his voice, you knew this wasn't a dream, and you knew you weren't hearing things.

"Daryl! Daryl, stop!" Rick's voice boomed. 

Your eyes widened as you ran down the stairs, your hair still damp and your feet sockless. 

Daryl tried every door in the community, trying to force his way through people's homes to find you, convinced that you were being hidden from him. Rick had to grab him and use all of his strength to pull him away from the last door he hadn't opened: yours. 

Your hand brushed at the doorknob and you gripped it with tears welling up in your eyes. As you pulled the door open, Daryl looked up with hope and froze for a split second in disbelief that you were standing right in front of him, without a single scratch or bruise. 

Rick let go of Daryl, his arm dropping and dangling by his side. 

"Is-Is that really-" Rick started almost breathlessly. 

"Daryl-"

He rushed towards you and lifted you up in his arms, his face nuzzling into your neck, inhaling the scent of your soap. Your heart thumped ferociously against his, and you wrapped your arms around Daryl tightly, afraid that if you let go, he'd vanish into thin air. 

"I thought-" Daryl sobbed.

"I know, I thought too," you cried, your voice wobbly.

"You've been 'ere, the whole time?" he asked, his voice gruff, reluctantly pulling away. 

The rest of the group piled around outside your house, watching with wide smiles and tears in their eyes, relieved that you made it. 

"The whole time," you sniffled as Daryl wiped a rolling tear away. 

Daryl shook his head, "If you didn't come back, I..." his croaky voice trailed off, and you shushed him. 

"It's okay now," you cooed, "it's okay."

Daryl finally put you down but still kept his hand around yours, allowing the rest of the group to come and embrace you in tight hugs, and as you scanned the group, you noticed new faces you had yet to meet, but noticed the absent faces of those you were certain had safely left the prison unharmed. 

The bar, where she finally let go and danced with you beneath blue and white lights. Then your place, after, where she peppered you with lazy kisses and fell asleep with her nose squished into your cheek.

Trinity usually trusts the voice. The dubious cynic who's built a settlement at the back of her brain, the one who reduces people to their simplest parts, because that's when they're at their easiest to read.

A patient lying about the amount of supplements they've been taking. A child who insists her father doesn't touch her in ways he shouldn't.

A senior resident helping himself to his patients' benzos.

As Trinity's fingers curl around the wooden picture frame, her heart suspended in abject terror, that voice finds its way home.

Most of the time, it's herself speaking. But every so often, in those moments of intense, crippling self-doubt, it's the very same raw, humiliating intonation as the man in the photo.

Stupid or arrogant, you need to realize that you are a beginner, which means that your job is to shut up, listen, and learn, because so far today? The only thing you have been successful at is proving repeatedly that you know nothing.

You know nothing.

Instinct screams at Trinity to hurl the frame across your apartment, the walls of which seem to be inching closer together with each passing second.

"Trin?"

Your clear tone yanks Trinity back to reality. She blinks once, twice, then looks to you.

"Your brother is Frank Langdon," she phrases it as a statement, but not one she's particularly pleased about.

Your eyes, slowly blinking in confusion, flick to the photograph, then back up to Trinity.

"You do know him," you conclude, plucking the frame from her hands and setting it on the table behind you.

Her nose twitches almost imperceptibly. You're not sure at all what to think of this newly unlocked version of the girl who slept beside you the night prior. Glitching out like a video game.

The silence is actually quite deafening, so you try cracking it from a different angle.

"Was he a dick to you?" You guess in that tutting, excusing way that sisters do. "He's just got a sensitive ego, that's all. Don't take it personally."

Trinity's jaw locks, her cheeks tightening with something you can only read as disdain.

Beneath her ribs, her heart tolls in slow, dizzying reverberations.

Fuck.

Trinity closes her eyes, disappearing without really leaving. Her throat bobs in a forced swallow, schooling her features into something she prays resembles neutrality.

"He was there on my first day," she says, fluttering her gaze open into yours. "The day of PittFest. I haven't worked with him since."

"Oh, my god, you were in the ER during PittFest?" You fiddle with the bottom hem of your t-shirt, dragging it between your thumb and forefinger. "That was your first day?"

She nods.

Your lips twist adorably in the side of your mouth.

It's a whack in the sternum when Trinity realizes she's seen your brother make the same exact expression.

"So, okay, what's your beef with him, then?" You ask after a beat, reaching for her hand.

She jerks back before you can touch her.

You pause, then take a step back to give her space. "Trin?"

Her seagreen eyes flick up to the ceiling, hands bracing the back of her neck.

"I have to get to work," she announces when she finally deigns to meet your gaze.

You frown. Confusion swirls around your head, trying like a failed private investigator to put the pieces together, but you come up short. You ultimately decide not to push it. Not right now.

She grabs her clothes from the night before off the counter behind her, then jerks her chin to the bathroom.

"You can wear those out," you nod warily to the sweatpants and hoodie Trinity borrowed to sleep in. They hang off her frame, probably one size too big, endearingly loose nevertheless.

A quiet reminder of how warm she'd been this morning.

Trinity's eyes meet yours blankly, as though she's struggling to compute the kindness you're trying so desperately to bestow.

As if you didn't buy her a drink last night.

As if you didn't give her your jacket.

As if you didn't ask her to stay, circling the pads of your fingers over her hipbone until she fell asleep.

"It's cold outside," you say by way of insistence, quieter now. Hurt, but unsure exactly why.

Trinity's lips purse and she gives a reluctant nod.

An impenetrable rampart has materialized between her and you. She can't bust it down to trace her fingers along your hairline or cradle your neck as she kisses you goodbye. She can't bring herself to promise that she'll call.

"Okay, thanks," is all she can say, clutching her folded clothes to her chest.

Her free hand reaches out, poised to touch you, then veers back at an awkward angle and into the pocket of her hoodie.

Your hoodie, that smells like vanilla and jasmine and clean linen sheets.

Last night had been nothing more than soft kisses and shared warmth, yet it might have been the most intimate interaction she's ever known.

But she can't hold that feeling and this new, unnerving one, at the same time.

When she disappears into the hall, you blink at the closed door with stinging sinuses.

Trinity schlepps into her apartment, and she can’t shake the lingering guilt that gnaws a hole through her stomach.

She hates leaving you like that.

With that abandoned puppy look on your face. The softly stricken downward tug of your lips, your eyes searching hers for answers she can't give.

Fuck. The realization hits her once again. Langdon.

Fuck Langdon.

His name itself is a trip wire, sending Trinity down crashing uncontrollably into self-doubt.

Fuck. Everything about last night was so warm and exhilarating and cozy and perfect. She could actually see this going somewhere.

She actually felt… wanted, instead of a way to pass the time.

In the course of twelve hours, you managed to worm your way into the dusty, forgotten basement of her heart.

You even started to clear some of the cobwebs.

Trinity finds Whitaker propped up against the kitchen sink when she locks the door behind her. One palm supports his weight while the other scrolls through his phone.

When he tears his gaze away from the screen, his eyes fix on the folded clothes in the crook of her arm.

"And just where were you last night, young lady?" He shoves his phone in his pocket, suddenly more interested in Trinity's debaucherous exploits than anything on the screen.

"Does this look like the face of someone who wants to talk about it," she says flatly.

"Hasn't stopped me from asking before," Whitaker shrugs. Only took two months of living together to learn how to bob and weave against her bad moods.

It's fucking irritating, being known like that.

She hangs her keys on the door.

"Whose clothes are those?" Whitaker's eyes follow her as she drags her feet into the kitchen against their will.

"No one's," her voice is edged with warning. She rummages through the open box of K-Cups on the counter, then jabs at the power button on the Keurig.

"Well, they're not Garcia's, because you didn't stay there last night."

She props herself up by her palms against the counter, then angles her head to the side. "How do you know—"

"You think I don't check your location when you don't come home at night?" Whitaker crosses his arms over his chest.

The concrete wall around Trinity's heart cracks the tiniest bit.

"You check my location?" she asks, her lips jutting out a little.

"Well, yeah," he shrugs, like caring for her is the easiest thing in the world.

They're locked in a staring contest for a few moments, Dennis arching a brow as he waits expectantly for her to open up.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to tell someone.

The Keurig sputters alive, so Trinity slams the K-Cup into its slot. If she's going spill her heart out all over the linoleum, she needs coffee first.

In the next ten minutes, Trinity relays the whole story to him. She ends up with her back against the arm of the couch, legs extended across the cushions and coffee in hand.

"Holy shit," is Huckleberry's intital reaction once Trinity finishes. He sits on the opposite side of the sofa in a mirrored position, his legs slotted between hers and the back cushion.

"That about sums it up," Trinity agrees, using her free hand to flip the hood of your sweatshirt up over her head. Your lingering scent envelops her in a warm embrace she knows she doesn't deserve.

"What did you say?" He asks. "That must have been…"

"Horrifying? Yeah, it was."

"I was gonna say 'difficult', but, sure."

She sips at her coffee, peering at Whitaker over the rim of the cup. He's so patient, giving her the space to process her emotions in real time. It's unnerving, especially with the knowledge that he doesn't have some kind of hidden agenda.

Trinity isn't used to that.

"I kinda…" she sighs, leaning in to the embarrassment. Might as well, right? "I kinda freaked out. Clammed up. Told her I had to get to work."

"But we're off today," says Huckleberry in the most Huckleberry way possible.

"That is correct."

"What are you gonna do?"

"Not a fucking clue."

"Shit," Dennis taps his fingers on the back of the couch, his expression twisting pensively. "Is it really that big of a deal? I mean, Langdon's not even been at work since PittFest."

Her jaw tenses. "What happens when she finds out I was the one who…" Trinity waves her free hand fruitlessly.

She doesn't regret telling Robby about the librium, or the lorazepam. Langdon could have, and might have already, hurt somebody. Even himself. But the people who've caught on have avoided her like she's radioactive for the past two months.

She's been busting her ass to prove herself to everyone, even without Langdon around to belittle her every decision.

"Do you think she'll even care?" Dennis asks.

"He's her brother. She has pictures of him in her apartment."

"And?"

"And?" Trinity repeats impatiently. "It's too messy! I don't have room in my life for messy!"

Huckleberry purses his lips.

"What?" she asks, already knowing she's not going to like the answer.

He gestures to her. "You're still wearing her clothes."

"Yeah, so what?"

Dennis shrugs, then swings his legs off the couch. He squeezes Trinity's sock-covered toes as he stands up, comfort-in-passing. "Seems like you already made room."

"What the fuck does that mean?" She scoffs, rolling her eyes at his simplistic, platitude-adjacent bullshit. "You've been watching too many Oprah reruns."

"I think you're scared, Santos," he shoots back. Brusque isn't exactly Huckleberry's forte. Trinity could laugh out of discomfort.

"What the hell do I have to be scared of?" She retorts. "I don't need her, especially not when she'll be a constant reminder of… of…"

"Someone you reported for committing a crime?" Dennis presses his lips into a flat line. "You didn't do anything wrong!"

"I know that!" Trinity exclaims, setting her coffee down on the side table. She crosses her arms over her chest indignantly. "But what happens when she realizes it was me, and she hates me for it?"

"Why do you assume she's going to hate you for it?" Dennis's palms open up. "You're not even giving her the chance to react, you're just deciding that she'll hate you."

Because people always hate me when they get too close, Trinity thinks.

"Fuck off, Huckleberry," she says halfheartedly, her jaw tightening. "I can deal with it myself, actually. Anyway, don't you have a widow to comfort?"

The humorless laugh that ekes out of her roommate is the kind where someone acts exactly the way you expect them to. He nods, then disappears into his room. 

Trinity drags her hand over her face. "Shit," she mutters, bringing her knees up to her chest.

She was right. She didn't like his answer.

Later, when she's climbing into bed at nearly eleven p.m, her phone vibrates. After spending the entire day grinding her teeth and wandering aimlessly around the empty apartment (because Huckleberry did, in fact, bumble off to his widow), the tug back into reality isn't particularly welcome.

She frowns when she sees the notification from you.

Trin, I spent my entire shift thinking about you. I know that's earnest and people don't really do that anymore, so I hope that isn't weird for you to read.

Trinity's heart buckles, and she tugs the hoodie string a little tighter, shielding her face.

A second text buzzes under the first.

But I also hope I hear from you soon. Sweet dreams.

The words ripple down Trinity's spine, and she stares at them for a while. Reads them, then rereads them.

She types up a reply, then immediately erases it.

I had a great time last night, but I don't think this will work out.

Gnawing on her lip, she tries again.

I'm the one who got your brother—

She abandons that one immediately.

You might be the freshest breath of air I've ever inhaled, but I'm terrified my lungs will collapse.

That gets deleted, too.

By midnight, Trinity slams her phone face-down on her nightstand, elicits a string of curse words, then forces herself to try and fall asleep.

Two days pass, and Trinity still hasn't responded.

She’s been crabby at work. More than normal, which has even Javadi concerned.

“Are you alright?” Victoria asks around two p.m, during a rare lull at the Central nurses’ station.

Their shift’s more than halfway over, but Trinity’s been lugging her feet behind her the entire day.

She drags her hands over her face, then forces a stretched, saccharine smile.

“I’m perfect,” she buckles, as always, under the weight of someone showing even a modicum of concern for her. “Don’t I look perfect, Crash?”

Javadi rolls her eyes at the nickname. “Not really,” she points out, her perceptive brown eyes flicking over Trinity’s figure. “You’ve been kind of sluggish, like, all day.”

“Who’s been sluggish?” Mateo sidles up beside Victoria, presenting a tablet to her. “Weird puncture wound in Triage," he explains. "McKay told me to pull you in on it.”

Javadi, to her credit, doesn’t immediately burst into a fit of girlish giggles like she has been each time Mateo so much as looks at her.

It's a unique kind of torture, watching two people blink at each other with swirling, cartoon hearts in their eyes. She nearly gags.

But with the spotlight now shifted off of Trinity, she takes the opportunity to flee the conversation.

Almost as soon as she pivots, a finger points at her from across the hub.

“Santos!” Robby beckons from the opposite end of the counter. “Incoming rig. You’re with me.”

“You got it, boss,” she adjusts her stethoscope, grateful for the distraction.

She bounds around the countertops.

Maybe it’ll be something gruesome, like a struck pedestrian or a GSW, Trinity thinks as she flanks Robby. That guy who got trapped under the refrigerator last week? Man, that was a great save.

She's surprised to find it's pouring down rain when they emerge out into the ambulance bay. It falls in sheets, slapping against the concrete and rattling the top of the rig as it comes to a halt beneath the canopy.

"What do we got?" Robby grunts as he hauls open the back.

“Twenty-five-year-old female, took a fall off an eight-foot ladder," the paramedic explains as Robby and Trinity help lower the gurney. "Struck her head on the edge of a picnic table. Laceration to the right temple, appears superficial. Brief LOC per bystanders. Complaining of dizziness and nausea en route.”

Trinity falters when she realizes it's you.

Propped awkwardly on the gurney, pressing bloody gauze to your head and completely soaked from the rain.

You squint, then blink hard.

"Trinity?" Even the aching in your head and black spots peppering your vision can't keep you from recognizing her.

"You know our Dr. Santos?" an imposingly tall, bearded doctor asks as he takes over the gurney from the paramedic. Something like amusement tugs at his voice.

He and Trinity roll you inside, the fluorescents bleaching your face in an instant. You groan, breathing heavily.

"Can you tell me your name, hon?" A nurse appears in front of you, trailing along the gurney as it rolls towards an empty space.

You rattle it off in a wobbly rasp.

A look passes between the staff at your last name, quick but not subtle. They wheel you behind a curtain, help you into a bed. Someone pricks your arm with a needle to start an IV.

"You're Langdon's little sister!" The nurse trills in affectionate recognition.

Through the haze, you can see the questions practically dancing on the tip of her tongue, but she doesn't ask.

You can't much bring yourself to care, too concerned with your heart pounding in your ears.

 “Frank’s your brother?” the older, male doctor clears his throat, glancing toward Trinity.

“Mmhm, yeah," you slur as the room around you tilts.

The nurse guides your hand to lower the gauze. The metallic smell of blood hits all at once.

Your stomach roils. You gag. “I’m gonna—”

Trinity anticipates it, quick to snap a plastic basin under your chin before you retch.

“Four of Zofran,” she instructs before inching closer to inspect the cut.

Suddenly all her training seeps through every pore, her mind racing at the sight of the laceration on your head. At the sight of you, here, a reminder that you weren't just a dream.

She blinks, forcing herself to focus on the things she knows to be true. A coping mechanism from her therapist.

"Santos," Robby's grunt from behind her presses her to vocalize her assessment.

"Um, no active bleeding, approximately three inches in length," she begins, her fingers brushing back your wet hair gently, and at the same time, the vomiting subsides.

The latex of her glove catches on the dried blood.

"Pupils?" the male doctor asks.

She produces a penlight at that, shining it in your eyes without warning. You flinch.

"Reactive," she swallows the stone in her throat.

"Can you tell us what happened?" Robby says your name from where he stands behind Santos, stance wide and arms crossed over his chest.

"I was cleaning the fairy lights at work," an uncomfortable frown stretches taut over your lips. "The rain came out of nowhere, and I slipped. Hit my head on…" you trail off, then close your eyes tightly as you strain to remember. "One of the picnic tables, I think."

The older doctor, presumably Trinity's boss, sneaks around her to examine the cut himself. He nods in agreement. "It doesn't look too bad," is Robby's conclusion, flicking his gaze from your injury to Trinity once again. "Dermabond for the wound, then get her in line for CT."

"I need a CT scan?" Your voice teeters then, abandoning your pride and your pain to seek comfort in Trinity's eyes.

Her gloved hand shoots to your forearm in an instant, squeezing.

"Just to make sure you don't have a concussion," She says gently. Her touch launches rockets through your veins, but somehow calms your nerves all the same.

How is it possible to feel so many conflicting things around one person?

The bearded doctor slides back around Trinity, then offers you a reassuring smile from the foot of your bed. "You're gonna be just fine, okay? Is Dr. Santos here a friend of yours?"

You smile weakly, unable to be impolite even in your current state. Whatever drug was injected to your IV starts to quell the nausea.

"Something like that," you murmur.

The doctor's eyes crinkle, catching Trinity's in a way you can't quite grasp. Fondness for her, definitely, but a glint of something more tense underneath. The kind of shared look passed between two people who share something they've agreed not to discuss.

"You're in good hands," he hums, then raps his knucles on the end of your bed before disappearing.

Trinity suddenly feels exposed to the elements, in North 5 of all places.

She realizes she's still holding your arm, so she releases it.

"A-are you in any pain?" She swallows once Robby's gone, her heart barraging against her ribs.

"Just a headache," you say softly, looking away. You think of the blank space below your texts and feel your bottom lip flip out on instinct.

"I'll get the Dermabond," the nurse on your other side announces, the curtain sliding behind her.

Trinity rolls a stool up beside your bed, then lowers herself onto it.

"No more nausea?" She asks. You shake your head, still wearing the expression of a disappointed toddler.

Trinity's voice lends itself to an apprehensive cheekiness. "Are you gonna look at me?"

It's dawning on you in this moment, now that the panic has subsided, that this is where your brother works. His hospital.

Or, at least, it was.

The details of his dismissal never really come to light during the family therapy you tag along to weekly, with Abby and the kids. Just that he did something worthy of a dismissal.

You drag your eyes to Trinity's. She inches closer, wheels of the stool squeaking against the linoleum floor.

"You never texted me back," you murmur as she tears open an alcohol pad with her fingers.

"Can I touch you?" she asks. Your breath catches.

You release it when you realize she means your head.

You nod, then she starts to swipe the alcohol pad along your forehead.

She never asks permission to touch patients in situations like this, especially not ones with head trauma. Usually, circumstance negates any pleasantries, but guilt gnaws at her to take the extra step with you.

"You'll tell me if any of this feels painful?" she asks. You sniff in confirmation.

The nurse, a kind-faced woman in a hijab, pokes her head in with a sterile tray of supplies before ducking out once again. Leaving you with Trinity. Alone.

"Gonna flush the area with saline, okay? You'll feel cold down your face and neck," she says quietly, then squeezes the bottle over your wound. The saline drips down the side of your head. She curves her hand around the shell of your ear, protecting it from errant drops.

Even through the latex, warmth radiates from her touch.

Your chest aches, reminded of how softly she brushed your hair behind your ear just two nights prior. So many questions swirl around your head, but the blockade between your brain and your mouth prevents you from asking.

“You passed out?” Trinity asks, to which you hum in confirmation.

The din and fray of the ever-busy ER on the other side of the curtain buzzes into your ears.

“Do you know what day it is?”

You rattle off the answer.

You want so badly to do one of two things: make direct, forthright eye contract with her, or look away from her altogether. Neither would be conducive to cleaning your cut, so you pick a spot on the curtain straight ahead.

“Okay,” Trinity’s hands are suddenly a phantom touch when she pulls away. She reaches for the tube of Dermabond.

“It might feel a little tender when I apply the glue,” she explains, dabbing some on a cotton swab. “But I’ll be really gentle. If it hurts too much, just let me know.”

Your fingers curl around the sheets at your side, but not because of the glue.

“That’s ironic,” you murmur.

Trinity freezes, the cotton swab hovering just an inch above your cut. Her jaw tightens, and she sucks her tongue down her front teeth.

“Hold still,” she grounds out, the first real reaction you've gotten out of her since you arrived, then applies the glue.

It doesn’t take her long. The cool breeze from her lips that follows sends a chill down your spine.

Gloves are disposed into the bin by the wall, then she —finally— meets your eye.

That acidic, dreadful feeling boils in your chest again. This time, apparently, the feeling overflows, like a pot left too long on the burner.

"We're really not gonna talk about it, then?" You find yourself asking.

Trinity’s either stunned by your tone, or something in her finally cracks. Her gaze snaps to you, blank at first, until her jaw tightens.

You’ve dragged something into this place, her place, that doesn’t belong here.

This hospital is where everything makes sense to her. Where she knows the rules.

You're going off-script, dragging in the exact mess she was trying to avoid behind you.

"What is there to talk about, exactly?" Trinity mutters, not convincing anyone. Least of all herself.

You let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “Seriously?”

The pounding in your head pulses, but you push through it. “We spend this really great night together," you recap, more convinced now that you still wouldn't have heard from Trinity if you'd not been brought to her place of work by an ambulance. "Then you find out who my brother is, freak out, and then ghost me?" 

She opens her mouth to protest.

“No,” you cut in, your voice climbing. “Don’t. What is your problem with Frank? Or is this not even about him?”

Her expression tightens. 

“Was I just a convenience?” you press. “Did you just not feel like getting an Uber that late?”

That is the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back. 

“Would you shut up for five fucking seconds?” she snaps, color rising in her cheeks. “I’m trying to dress your goddamn wound, in case you forgot that you're literally bleeding from the head.”

You go quiet.

Trinity takes the opening, pressing the dressing into place, firmer than necessary. You flinch but don’t make a sound.

She steps back immediately, like the contact burned. “I can’t do this here,” she admits, hands coming up placatingly. “You need a CT to rule out a concussion. Do you have someone who can pick you up in a couple hours?”

Her eyes flick up to yours, almost pleading.

You swallow, shoulders sagging. “Yeah," you concede, sniffing. "I’ll call somebody.”

“It won’t take long,” she adds quickly. “We’re not slammed. I’ll check your results when you’re back, and I’ll…” She falters, hand dragging over the back of her neck. “I’ll call you after my shift. Okay?”

A beat passes.

“Fine.”

The flatness of your voice punches Trinity in the gut harder than she anticipated.

You know when you're not wanted, and Trinity does not want you here. 

You're there another two hours, which is apparently VIP treatment around here. 

Someone brings you a gown while your clothes dry. A nurse checks your bandage, says there’s no more bleeding. Then you’re wheeled to CT, staring up at fluorescent panels as the hospital hums around you. Everyone moves with purpose, like they were born knowing what to do.

This is where your brother spent the bulk of his time. Before. 

This is where he saved lives. This is where his own life fell apart. 

By the time they roll you back, the adrenaline’s worn off, leaving you wrung out and heavy. 

You sit there for a while, twiddling your thumbs and avoiding your phone because the nurse said a screen might worsen the pounding in your head. Your eyes eventually grow heavier, and sleep starts to lull you in closer… 

…and then the curtain snaps open.

“You don’t have a concussion,” Trinity declares, already halfway inside. Flat and efficient. Almost disinterested, even. “We’ll get you discharged.”

She doesn’t really look at you. Just at the tablet in her hands. 

She wants this over. She wants you out of here. Why would she want you to stay? 

"I'm clear to sleep, then?" You ask, rubbing your arm to ground yourself. "I've heard sleeping with a head injury can make it worse."

"I just said you don't have a concussion," she snaps. 

The words shrink you. You sink back into the mattress, feeling quiet and small.

Trinity takes in the bandage tugging at your temple, gown slipping off your shoulder. Pathetic, pouting puppy. Just like when she'd left the other morning.

She presses her lips together, forcing the memory from her mind. “Is someone coming to get you?” she asks. “I can’t let you leave alone.”

Had this exchange happened two nights prior, you probably would've rattled off something smooth about how if she'd leave with you, you wouldn't be alone. 

But you just blink back at her, perhaps a little too guiltily.

  "What?" she demands.

  "I forgot to call somebody," you groan, reaching up to pinch the space between your brows. 

A humorless laugh escapes Trinity's lips. "Fucking figures," she mutters. 

It's your turn for your resolve to crack. "Excuse me?" 

"I said it fucking figures," she slows her words, making sure you hear every syllable. "Just doing whatever the fuck you want, without regard for consequence. Must be a family thing." 

You push yourself up in the bed. 

"Okay," you scoff, accompanied by a thin, incredulous laugh. Your eyes narrow at her. "I'm gonna give you a second to take that back." 

She just stares at you, shifting her weight to one hip and arching an immaculate brow. Cool and unperturbed. Your theory that she'd be a cat in another life only garners more evidence.

"What is your fucking problem with my brother?" You ask finally. 

"Exactly the same problem I have with you," she fires back. "You both take up too much space."

The words suspend between you, sharp and ugly.

You swallow, your throat tight. “That’s not fair.”

Trinity exhales through her nose, already shaking her head in dismissal. “I’m not doing this.”

“No!" You exclaim, heat flaring again despite the exhaustion dragging at your limbs. "You don’t get to say something like that, then just… walk away! You don't get to push me away when I still don't understand what the fuck happened. You don’t get to act like I’m the problem when you’re the one who disappeared without an explanation.”

“I didn’t disappear,” she shoots back. “I made a decision.”

“Yeah?” Your head tilts to the side. “And what's that?”

"That this was a mistake," her words bullet into you. "That it's too messy, and I'm not interested in it anymore."

"Why is it messy that you know my brother?" You snap, the simplicity of it grating into you. 

"Because!" Trinity groans, tightening her fist at her side. "I was the one who—" 

She cuts herself off, but the angry redness heating her entire face tells you all you need to know. 

"You…" you blink, then shake your head. 

She blows a breath out, as though she's both unburdened and horrified with herself at the same time.

"You're the one who reported him," it comes out as a statement. You blink, slow and heavy. 

The information tangles like a cord in your throat and your chest. You're not sure how you feel, exactly. You're so exhausted, but you don't think you're angry about this new tidbit of information. Just… surprised. 

"Why didn't you tell me?" You ask, quieter now. "Why'd you get all…" you trail off, trying very diplomatically to come up with another term for emotionally constipated.

"…all mean when I tried to ask you about it?" 

"Because this is what I do," Trinity throws her hand up, and when gravity brings it slapping dramatically into her thigh, you frown. "I push people away before they get too close. Once you do, you leave. You all do. And me being the reason your brother was dismissed from his job?" 

She shakes her head, averting her gaze from yours. "You have more reason to hate me than most people do." 

"I don't hate you," your voice softens. You're suddenly very aware that the walls around your bed is actually only a curtain. The patients on either side of you are surely very entertained by the soap opera occurring in this ER. "You didn't even give me a chance to react, you just assumed I'd react poorly." 

"Because everybody does!" Trinity's voice raises once more, before she seems to think better of herself. "Everybody does," she repeats, softer now. "You're no different. How could you be?" 

You think of the night you shared. How you danced with her under shimmering blue lights at the bar. How you kissed her more slowly and deliberately on the couch in your apartment. How you curled up next to her, in your bed, like a dog. 

Suddenly, all of it is more embarrassing than it is magical. 

Tears prick at your eyes, but Trinity doesn't seem to notice. Or if she does, she doesn't care. "I'll get your aftercare paperwork together," her shoulders heave, reverting to the script she knows so well. She reaches blindly for the curtain behind her. "Come back if it gets any worse." 

Isn't that the understatement of the fucking year.

Trinity isn't proud of the half-crouch she falls into when she sees you emerging from behind the curtain of North 5 twenty minutes later.

She isn't proud of it, but it is necessary. Her skin crawls with the words she said, the admission of guilt, the look on your face. 

You said the same thing Huckleberry did. That she didn't give you the chance to react, that she assumed you'd hate her for it. 

So Trinity ensured that you'd hate her, if not for that, then… 

I'm such an idiot, she thinks, sighing and rubbing her hand tiredly over her face. 

It occurs to her that she never made sure someone was actually coming to pick you up. She can't, in good conscience, let you leave alone. Not with a bandage over your head. Not with an aching fondness for you still haunting the chambers of her heart. 

She waits for you to step out through the waiting room before she follows, breaking into a purposeful, brisk walk. 

You politely shoulder through the crowd, making sure to say 'excuse me' or 'sorry' to each person in your way.

Trinity does not make the same efforts, barely looking anyone in the eye. 

The rain has faded into a diluted trickle as opposed to the toerrential downpour earlier. The sky looms overcast, but the sun remains behind the grey clouds. Looming. Waiting for her cue to come onstage. 

Trinity watches you scan the bustling street just outside the hospital, clutching the paper with your aftercare instructions to your chest. You step towards the curb just as a minivan rolls up, hazards flashing.

A woman in her mid-thirties leans across the console, propping the passenger's side door for you. The backseat windows are rolled down to reveal two kids in carseats, a boy and a girl, both waving at you excitedly. Trinity even spies the boy shouting 'Auntie!'. 

Jesus, she thinks, cursing the endeared uptick of her lips. Don't make me humanize Langdon. 

You clamor into the passenger's seat, yanking the door shut behind you. As you're buckling your seatbelt, you shoot a glance back to the hospital. 

On instinct, Trinity flattens herself against the nearest wall. To no avail, because your eyes lock directly on hers. 

As the woman signals and merges back into traffic, Trinity spies you cradling your head in your hands. 

Your lower back ached terribly that morning, if Daryl had a clue you were working while being in pain he'd immediately send you back to bed, the baby had started sitting heavier these past few weeks, enough to make every movement slower, every chore more exhausting, but you wanted to feel useful, so you held a pen and paper and took notes of Olivia's counts, hand resting against the showing curve of your stomach to ease the weight that killed your back. Then, Negan walked in, he whistled low the second he noticed you.

"Will you look at that." he curved himself back, drawing each word, his eyes dragged shamelessly over your stomach and breasts, enough to make your skin crawl. “I see someone's been keeping herself busy!"

You immediately looked away from him, jaw tightening, your knuckles white. Olivia went rigid beside you. Men like him fed off reactions. Keep it cool.

The Savior leaned casually against one of the shelves like he owned the place. “So, when you're due, now? I'd love to see the gathering. Little apocalypse family and shit.” You ignored him, grabbing another can from the box near your feet.

"Question is," he continued "who's the lucky bastard who managed to pick a pretty girl like you here, huh?" he leans in closer "'Cause I'm gonna tell you, sweetheart, I have seen nothing but loser men out here."

You felt it before you saw him. Daryl had been outside unloading crates with Aaron when he saw Negan make his way towards where you were. Aaron sent him a permissive look, one that said "Check on her, I'll cover you.". Daryl bolted out of his post to go after you, to find Negan hovering over you as mumbling nonsensical shit.

Negan felt that your gaze was glued to whoever was now standing behind him, smiling widely when he noticed that when he took a turn, he'd be looking at the baby daddy. He swings on his feet, turning curiously to stare the man on the face, ready to mock the pauper guy, facing Daryl, to his surprise.

"Doesn't this get even more interesting!" he shouts, facing Daryl inches away, then turning back to you. "So she's your girl! I gotta say, my man," he pats his back like he was an old pal "you got something right in your life, I'll give you that."

Daryl's shoulders tensed beneath the sleeveless shirt he’d worn threadbare. Dirt smeared his forearms, sweat dampened his hair at the temples, gluing the strands to his skull, exhaustion sat deep behind his eyes. He looked dangerous before he even spoke, choosing to ignore the Savior completely. “You alright?” he asked roughly, looking straight into your eyes.

Negan scoffed. “You guys are gonna give me a cavity out here.”

You nodded once. “I’m fine.”

The second time, it wasn't Negan, but another Savior, whose name neither of you bothered to learn. He was far less subtle about it. He saw your round belly, even bigger this time, a week apart from the first occurrence. He nudges one of his colleagues to say, unbothered if you heard it or not. "Wish I was the lucky bastard who impregnated this bitch." the others by his side laugh, gazing at you.

Daryl looked at him then, he knew he couldn't do what he really wanted, so he just kept his gaze pierced on the man. “Just congratulating you, man. Didn’t think you had it in you.” Negan shrugs, swinging back out the door.

This time, more people were in the room besides you and Olivia, Rick, their other Saviors, and Daryl. He didn't manage to hold back this time, crossed the room so fast the shelves rattled when he slammed the man against them.

The Savior cursed loudly as what was left of your very few cans crashed to the floor around them, but Daryl didn't flinch, he didn't care. All he could concentrate on was his forearm pressed hard against the guy’s throat, pushing out his knife merely inches away from the guy's eye.

“Say another damn thing 'bout her.” Daryl snarled. “See what happens.”

The other Saviors straightened. One of them reached for his gun.

“Daryl.” Rick’s voice cut sharply through the room. “Let him go.”

“Nah.” he grunts

The Savior tried to shove Daryl off him. “Get this psycho off me.” Daryl pressed harder.

“He keeps lookin’ at her.”

Rick stepped closer carefully, hands visible, posture calm in the way he only got when things were seconds from disaster. “They’re looking for a reason.”

“They already got one,” Daryl snapped. “They take whatever they want anyway.”

“Daryl.”

“You talk 'bout my wife again. Yer dead.” He threatened, and you knew he meant it.

The Savior swallowed hard beneath Daryl’s arm, finally losing some of that smugness. “Man, I was joking.”

“I don't give a shit!”

For one horrible second, you thought everything would collapse right there. A slit throat, shots, blood everywhere, Alexandria falling because one Savior couldn’t keep his mouth shut and Daryl would never let it slide. Then, Rick looked at you, you understood what he meant without needing words. Slowly, you stepped closer.

“Daryl.” His breathing stuttered for half a second. "Honey."

He looked at you instantly, belly round baring his child, ring shining on your finger, that he gave to you not so long ago. Too much to lose. Your figure pulled him out of wherever his anger had taken him.

“It’s okay,” you said softly. He knew it wasn't, you were shaken by what the man had said, he saw right thought you, still, he shoved the Savior away from him. The man stumbled back coughing violently, glaring murderously while adjusting his jacket. “Negan’s gonna love hearing about this.”

Daryl took a step forward again, Rick blocked him immediately.

“Out.” Rick ordered.

The Savior laughed bitterly under his breath before backing toward the door. “Congratulations, by the way.” Your husband looked ready to rip his throat out.

The second the trucks disappeared beyond Alexandria’s gates later that afternoon, Rick cornered Daryl near the armory.

“You cannot keep doing this,” Rick hissed.

Daryl scoffed, pacing like a caged animal. “He was talkin’ about m'wife like she's a piece of meat."

“And if you start fights every time one of them opens their mouth to say some shit, people die.”

“They’re dyin’ anyway.”

Rick’s face hardened instantly. “I’m trying to keep this place standing.”

“At what cost?”

“At least they’re alive.”

Daryl laughed then, harsh and humorless. “This ain’t livin’, Rick."

You stood nearby, rocking on a chair on the porch outside your shared house, listening.

Rick lowered his voice. “You think I like this?”

“I think you let ‘em walk in here an’ take whatever they want.”

“What do you want me to do?” Rick snapped suddenly. “Fight them? With what?”

Daryl stepped closer immediately. “Better than bendin’ over every damn week. I have a pregnant woman eating scraps at my house and can't do shit about it! How do ya think I feel?"

Rick’s patience cracked. “You think I don’t know what they’re doing to us? Look around!”

“I am lookin’ around.” Daryl shot back. “People are starvin’.”

“We’re rationing.”

“She shouldn’t be! My unborn child shouldn't be! She barely eats enough. She gets sick every mornin’. Can’t sleep right. An’ every damn time they come here they strip more off our shelves."

Rick’s expression softened for only a moment. Exhaustion settled into every line on his face nowadays.

“I’m doing everything I can.”

Daryl walked away first, mumbling "It ain’t enough.” at he walked into the house slamming the door, you gave Rick an apologetic look before getting up and entering the house after your husband.

You found Daryl curled up on the corner of the bed, eyes teary, he looks briefly to you as you enter the room, opening his arms gladly to hold you while he let out hot tears that soaked your shirt on the stomach level, and you stroked his hair. He finally looked over to you properly after a few minutes, red eyes and messy hair, concern etched deep into his face. Daryl had always looked rough around the edges, but lately he carried something heavier. Like fear lived permanently beneath his skin now. You gently stroke his cheek, wiping a few tears off.

“I’m okay, darling. We're gonna be okay."

His eyes dropped immediately to your stomach.

You were showing enough now that even sitting down felt awkward some days.

“They keep starin’ at ya,” he muttered finally.

“The Saviors?” he nodded. "Like they got a right.”

You softened immediately. Fear always sounded like anger when it came from Daryl. You carefully laced your fingers through his. “They’re not gonna hurt me." his eyes snap back to your face "You don’t know that.”

“You can’t protect me from everything, Daryl." you whispered gently. "I'll do my best. For both of you."

His rough hands settled carefully against your stomach, the baby kicked beneath his palm. Every single time it happened, he reacted like it shocked him all over again, his face looked less tense.

It was rare now, seeing Daryl relaxed enough to look soft around the edges. But moments with the baby always did it. Like the world stopped being so ugly for a second. “Strong little thing,” he muttered quietly.

"Jus' like his daddy." you shift from where you stood to sit by his side, sighing deeply in relief when you feel the weight lift a little off your back.

"And his mama." He praises, pulling you to lean against his shoulder.

For reasons you aren’t necessarily ready to unpack yet, you get extra dressed up on Friday before your shift. Even though you always go to work in something cute with a full face of makeup, today you take extra time with your hair, add a bit more sparkle to your eyes and cheeks, and pick out a baby blue skirt that might show off more of your plush legs than usual. And, when you see Pope and Lena stepping through the doors right around closing time, you double-check yourself in the closest makeup mirror you can find.

Lena clearly also dressed up, adorably enthusiastic, wearing a summery yellow two-piece set that’s so much more fashionable than what you wore at her age. She’s also rocking a pair of crisp white shoes with chunky speckled yellow laces that you immediately clock as Lanvin curb sneakers, which means Pope definitely gives her carte blanche when it comes to shopping. Even though he’s accompanying a preteen wearing a four-figure outfit, today Pope’s dressed in jeans and a basic white tee, looking much less intimidating than he did wearing all black in that big-ass car of his.

Buzzing with a huge smile as soon as she spots you, Lena skips over and nearly bowls you onto your ass with the force of her hug. She squeals, “I’ve been so excited about this all week!”

“Lena, hey! Me too; this’ll be super fun.” You duck down to return her hug and then address her uncle, too, “Thanks for bringing her. I’m sure this is a little out of your comfort zone.”

“What, me? C’mon, I know all about-” Pope squints at a nearby wall of products with an adorable wrinkle between his eyebrows, which go up in true confusion “-serums. And balms. Right up my alley.”

You snicker and give his arm a squeeze. “You’re so cute, Pope.” Then, as the apples of his cheek tint pink because it’s been a very long time since a girl called him that, you wave toward the lounge part of the store and offer, “Now you can go sit in the corner with all the dads and boyfriends while us girls have our fun.”

But he shakes his head and insists, “No, I wanna learn, too. So I know what stuff she likes and what’s good.”

Lena’s unfazed by the fact that her uncle just said something that sets him apart and above 75% of father figures, so you know that Pope must always be like this with her. The picture of care.

So you tenderly agree, “sounds good,” and lead them over to the skincare section, where you explain to Lena, “To start off, you need a solid skincare routine; that’ll help you keep your face healthy while you grow up, which is super important. Even though you don’t have pimples or anything now, building those habits will help you keep your skin glowy and soft no matter what. I always say ‘the best routine is the one you stick to,’ so it’s not about using tons of products. Really, all you need is a good gentle cleanser, moisturizer, and especially a nice lightweight sunscreen living down here.”

While you answer Lena’s questions about different products and let her try out samples, Pope removes a small Moleskine notebook from his back pocket and takes notes on what you’re saying, writing down details about sustainable makeup removing wipes, cleansers for sensitive skin, and the benefits of cream vs. gel moisturizers. Honestly, you might as well shove him into a corner and start making out with him because it’s just so endearing. His expression is so soft and so intensely focused on Lena’s every reaction that your heart skips a beat.

Once you’ve helped Lena pick out a solid basic routine, you lead her through aisles of makeup, saying, “Okay, now let’s focus on getting you a wide variety of fun things you can play with since you really don’t have to worry about foundation or contour or anything like that for now.”

Toying with a bottle of thick foundation, she furrows her brows and asks, “Why not? You always do those in your videos.”

“Here, come look in this mirror.” You bend down over her shoulder so your faces are at the same level. “You have perfect skin, Lena. Covering it up right now would just be silly and clog up your pores unnecessarily.”

From behind, Pope can see up your skirt to the lacy pink panties beneath. It takes all of his willpower to focus on the parenting moment in front of him instead of the way your huge heels make your calves and thighs look. God, he didn’t realize how tall you are until now. In the heels, you probably have an two inches on him, and he wants you to step on his

“Right, Pope?”

You’re looking at him with expectant eyes and he rips his eyes from your body. He has no idea what you’re talking about, but he’s pretty sure you’re probably right, so he nods. “Yeah, exactly.”

“See? In the next year or so, you can start with something gentle like a tinted moisturizer to even out any redness you might get, but you definitely don’t need to worry about things as heavy as contouring yet.”

Lena asks you reluctantly, “But wouldn’t contouring make my cheeks look less fat? Maya Jenkins says I have fat cheeks like a chipmunk.”

Pope growls under his breath, but you’re quick to argue first: “Well she sounds like a mean girl and you should never listen to mean girls because they’re always wrong and they’re ugly down to their souls, which is the worst kind of ugly.” You touch her chin, tilting her face to the side in the mirror. Hoping she’ll see what you see, you tell her, “Soft features are really pretty. They’re timeless like women in classic paintings. And versatile. You can look cute and you can look elegant.” Her expression softens as she looks between her face and yours, so you add seriously, “As for her calling you fat? There’s nothing wrong with being any different size. Skinny girls and big girls can all be just as pretty as each other. We girls need to lift each other up, not tear each other down.”

Considering it seriously for a moment, Lena meets your eyes and decides, “That makes sense. I don’t like how Maya talks about my friends, so she’s probably wrong when she talks about me, too.”

“You’re really smart, Lena.” You give her arm a quick squeeze and continue, “Alright, after-school-special time over. Let’s get shopping.”

Pope lets out an amused little snort as your demeanor flips back into the bubbly light one you usually have on.

“So, when I think about makeup,” you tell Lena as you show her different brands oriented more toward girls her age, “I think about two things: Spending time taking care of yourself and having fun being creative with self-expression. You don’t need to be glam all the time or learn all these crazy skills right off the bat. Showing up to school with a full face is honestly no fun anyway because it’ll get cakey and sweaty and you don’t want to be worried about reapplying during lunch or after gym and stuff.”

Lena explains the kind of things she wants to learn to do – mainly fun eye looks with lots of glitter – so you pick out some palettes in colors you think would complement her eyes and make her personality pop. You choose a handful of mini eyeliners so she can try different applicators. A few times, you try to check with Pope to make sure it’s okay when you reach for nicer products, but he just waves you off with a gruff ‘whatever you think’ every time. So eventually you stop asking, getting used to the ease that comes with not having to worry.

After about half an hour, Lena’s got enough makeup in her bag to satisfy any tween’s Pinterest board goals – plus, more importantly to Pope, a huge smile on her face and buzzing with energy to get home and start trying things out. As you ring up the sale, internally cringing at the price even though you know Pope is okay with it, Pope leans forward across the check-out desk and asks quietly, almost bashfully, “Do you make commission on sales?”

Reading him wrong, you quickly reply, “Um, yes, I do, but that’s definitely not why I’m-”

“That’s not what I meant,” he cuts you off, equally as nervous to make sure you understand each other. With his hands in his pockets, he drops his gaze and orders, gentle but still stern, “Pick some stuff out for yourself, too. So I can say thank you.”

“I have plenty of makeup already,” you assure him, trying to ignore how the soft intensity in his hazel eyes has heat creeping up your chest. “I’d never want to take advantage of how generous you’re already being.”

Flummoxed by that response because he’s used to girls mostly being receptive to him because of money, Pope offers with a nod toward the men’s section, “Okay, then get some of this skincare stuff for me. My skin’s shit.”

“Well, I’ll never say no to an opportunity to turn a man on to skincare, you giggle. Coming around in front of the register again, you ask, “What’s your current routine?”

“Ah,” he replies, clearly embarrassed by the truth, “I wash my face in the shower, usually, I guess.”

Horror draws slowly across your features. “With your body wash?”

“The way you said that makes me think it’s wrong.”

“Very, very wrong.” You rest your hands on his shoulders and make deadly eye contact, “Like, mortal sin wrong.”

He smirks and shrugs. “I’m sure I’ve done worse.”

“Impossible.” You hold his face between both hands and murmur, “Here, let me look at you up close.”

When his eyes flick upwards, you catch a quick, fleeting innocence in them. It goes away as soon as he settles, but it was definitely there. Something sweet and wholesome inside him. As you scrutinize his T-zone, Pope can’t deny the way his heart rate climbs in his throat.

“First of all,” you announce like you’re admonishing him, “you really need to start putting on sunscreen every day. Red hair and freckles. No excuse.”

He pouts, “I don’t have red hair anymore.”

“It’s auburn and it’s as handsome as the rest of you.” Then, before he can process the compliment fully, you collect a few products for him. You can’t meet his eyes even though you feel them watching your every move; it’s not like you to be confident and flirty, really, especially not with someone who you already know has a kid and a dark side. But you can’t help it. He’s just so fucking handsome and so good with Lena. When you turn back, it’s with full hands. “Dr. Barbara Sturm sunscreen because it’s lightweight, long-lasting, and hydrating. Wear it every single day. Seriously. I’ll be able to smell it on you; if you skip it, I’ll beat you up.”

A laugh punches out of him. “Couldn’t have that.”

Inspecting him very closely, you order, “Now, tell me what you do for work.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Trying to figure out if I’d be a good sugar daddy?”

“Trying to figure out how you have so much skin damage when you’re, what, 35?” Turning his face side to side in your hands, you muse, “Construction, maybe? Landscaping?”

“I own a skatepark,” he says, searching your expression to see how you’ll react. “Half inside, half outside. We do outreach for kids who’ve been in juvie, no parents, shithead parents, whatever. Kids like me and my brothers were. If they show me that they’re in school every semester, they get in for free. I try to keep ‘em fed, help with whatever I can. A lot of the time that means sweating in the sun, which I guess isn’t good for my face.”

God, does he have to be so perfect? Rugged and sexy and soft? That should be illegal, to be frank. You swallow hard, trying not to get flustered at how big your crush is getting all of a sudden, and present him with, “Paula’s Choice toner and exfoliant every other day to get all that outdoors and sweat off your skin and Medik8 peptide serum to prevent even more damage.”

He nods seriously, treating your word as law, and asks with a furrowed brow, “What the hell is a peptide?”

“They’re amino acids that build collagen,” you explain, “so they act as, like, a tiny blueprint to tell your skin to make more of the good stuff and less of the bad stuff.”

He examines the bottle and murmurs, “You’re smart.”

“The boutique owners paid for me to take a couple cosmetology classes,” you tell him with a modest shrug. You’ve never been comfortable accepting compliments, so you quickly hand him one more jar and say, “Finish with this La Mer cream; it’s nice and light for summers here, but it’ll still make sure you’re smooth and soft and touchable.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “Touchable?”

Your lip twitches up into a smirk. “Yeah. Touchable.”

“I guess that’s a good thing.” With an adorably furrowed brow, he asks, “Do I need anything else? Be thorough.”

“That’s a good basic routine to start,” you assure him. “But, y’know, if you want to be fancy and impress someone now that you’re going to have such nice skin, this-” you pick up a classic amber bottle of YSL’s Tuxedo “-is my absolute favorite scent for men.”

He doesn’t even glance at the $300 price tag, stuck staring at the way your lips mold around each word and smile. “Sold.”

All the while, pretending to look at magazines by the checkout, Lena sneakily watches with a small, mischievous smile on her face. She’s never seen Pope look at a girl like this and she’s already daydreaming about ways to meddle.

Pope and Lena live in a beautiful house right on the shore. It has four bedrooms; Lena has the primary suite with a walk-in closet and en-suite bathroom while Pope sleeps in the smallest room closest to the front door. Another bedroom is Pope’s ‘home office,’ which consists of free weights and a laptop. The last bedroom is completely empty save some boxes and plastic totes for storage; Pope explains that he didn’t care how many bedrooms the house had because, quote, Lena picked it out. He just wanted her to be happy – to the tune of a couple million dollars.

It’s an easy evening between the three of you. Pope insists on ordering a veritable buffet of food from your favorite local place, which Lena then insists on actually eating around their dining room table. She says that was her mom’s rule before she died, so they still do it now. You’re surprised how easy it is to talk to them both at once. Pope is an amazing listener, Lena is an absolute chatterbox, and you land somewhere in the middle.

Once you’ve all eaten, Lena gives you a tour of her huge walk-in closet and bathroom, clearly proud of how everything’s color-coded and organized. You just keep throwing Pope incredulous looks, which he responds to with sheepish shrugs. For how absolutely spoiled she is financially, Lena is still a normal, insecure preteen looking for approval from adults and friends alike, so she takes your first makeup lesson deathly seriously.

For two full hours, you teach Lena a few basics about blending colors, pulling straight eyeliner lines, and taking care of her skin. All the while, Pope watches absently. He’ll stand in the doorway for a few minutes in between cleaning the house and making phone calls or he’ll actually come in, sit on the edge of the bathtub, and ask about what you’re doing. He’s particularly nervous about Lena putting so many pointy things near her eye, but you remind him that women have been doing this for thousands of years, so he can calm down. And he grunts. You’re growing to quite like all his little grunts. It seems like most of the time it’s just too much work for him to find the right words while also making eye contact with you, which is clearly a bit of an effort for him, so he makes some absent noise to fill the space of a response.

You can tell he likes you. It’s obvious in the way his eyes can barely hold yours when you can tell he’s usually big into staring. Or, at the very least, he thinks you’re hot, which is a much lower bar since you’re perfectly aware that you are. Still, though. You’re definitely not going to be the one to make the first move because you don’t want to make things weird for Lena, but it’s a fact you file away close to your butterfly-filled stomach, somewhere by your heart, for safekeeping.

After Lena’s in bed (with very clean and dewy skin, thank you very much), Pope drives you home in his ridiculous, huge car. There’s a few beats of awkward silence after he backs out of the driveway before he says, “Thank you again. I know hanging out with a tween and her weird uncle probably wasn’t your ideal Friday night.”

“I actually had a lot of fun,” you promise. “Lena’s a great kid. And you’re not as bad to be around as you think.”

“Thanks,” he replies, sounding almost choked up with his eyes trained forward on the road so he doesn’t have to look at those pretty lips of yours again. “It means a lot. To, ah, to have a woman to- for you to- Fuck.” He shakes his head and tries again, “I just- I’ve got no idea how to do this. Being a girl’s only parent when she’s starting to get into makeup and shit. She asked me for a bra last week. I mean, what the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

You snort and shove him on the arm. You swear he flexes his bicep when your hand lingers, but you don’t point it out. “Buy her a bra, genius.”

He scoffs, “Like it’s that simple.”

“It is that simple. They sell training bras at, like, Target. It’s not rocket science.” But he looks at you like it is, in fact, rocket science, so you roll your eyes and add, “You’re useless; I’ll go shopping with you two. They’re just T-shirt sizes. You won’t even have to talk to anyone or go to a Victoria's Secret or anything.”

“I’m not useless,” he pouts adorably, eyes flicking briefly over to yours, “but your, ah, your, y’know, feminine touch-” You crack up laughing at how foreign the words sound on his tongue and he does, too, shaking his head at himself. He smiles and corrects, “That would be great. Thank you.”

“It’s no problem,” you assure him once again. You can tell the burden of parenting is heavy on his shoulders. Something about him and about Lena makes you want to help. It’s nice to feel like your knowledge matters. Like you’re not just some pretty brainless thing the way so many guys have treated you. Softer, knowing how good it would be for all three of you, you tell him, “It’s really nice to be around a family like you and Lena. I’ll watch her any time you need, Pope.”

He considers that, huffing, “It’d definitely be good to stop pawning her off on my brothers.”

“I overheard you saying they’re, ah, maybe not the best role models.”

“Craig’s a burnout idiot with a newborn,” Pope confirms, “and Deran’s…fine, I guess, but he’s always at his bar, and I’m not going to risk my custody dropping a kid off there.” He runs a hand through his curls and sighs out, “Half the time Lena has to come to the skate park with me to do her homework and shit because she’s not old enough to stay home alone yet and I can’t- I can’t handle the idea of her being home alone, anyway. She never complains about it because her dad didn’t exactly set good standards, but that doesn’t make it the best thing for her.”

There’s a beat of heavy silence, then. His fear of Lena being alone. His fear of failure. His fear of opening up the cracks in his family that you might be able to fill. As Pope pulls into a space in front of your apartment complex, you turn to him and tentatively ask, “Would you mind walking me up? It’s getting awfully late to be alone.”

He swallows hard and nods tightly. As if he would’ve let you walk out of his sight by yourself. “Of course.”

While you collect your bag and jacket, Pope hops out first and opens your door, offering his hand because it’s basically a fifty-foot drop. You take his hand tightly in yours and clamber down, telling him with a huff as you wobble on the dismount, “You should really get a smaller car if you’re gonna be driving pretty girls in high heels around.”

He chuckles stiffly, hand on your lower back a few moments longer than necessary as you stabilize, “If a pretty girl in high heels ends up in my car a few more times, I’ll consider it.”

You giggle and shove him with your elbow. “How the hell does Lena even get in this thing?”

Pope holds his ribs in mock pain. “By helicopter.”

“Oh, so you’re rich rich,” you tease. Then, dropping your voice a bit more seriously, you press, “Where’d you get all your money anyway? Don’t tell me you think I’m dumb enough to believe you own a house like that with your skate park that’s basically a non-profit.”

He follows close to you as you head into the building and toward the elevator. Reluctantly, he admits, “I own a couple properties, too.”

You gasp dramatically, “You’re a landlord?”

“Yes,” he goes on hastily, “but I actually do all the repairs and I follow the local union’s cost guidelines and-”

“I can tell you’re a good man, Pope, don’t worry.” The two of you drop into silence for a few moments as he fights not to disagree with you. That’s something he’s worked on in the court-mandated therapy to keep custody of Lena as a felon and he’s been trying to comply, trying to play by the rules for once, trying to be good. For her and for the world he wants to create for her. Behind the elevator’s closed doors, you ask, “What happened to them – Lena’s parents? Your brother?”

Pope shakes his head. “You don’t want to know.”

“I do.”

“It’ll scare you off.”

“It won’t.” When he still stays quiet, you needle, “If I’m going to be part of her life, you should tell me this kind of stuff. What about her dad?”

Pope just shrugs. “He left.”

“He’s still alive?” You balk, “Shit, what an asshole. Does she know anything about it?”

“Yeah, she does.” Pope glares at his shoes as he remembers aloud, “He packed his shit and dropped her off at my apartment. Middle of the night. Out of nowhere. She was half asleep and he was high as fuck.”

You let out a long breath; somehow, you can still be surprised by how people will treat their children. “You don’t think there’s any chance he’s coming back?”

“No. He’s got a new family down in Mexico. His son’s around Lena’s age.”

“Jesus.” At your floor, you slowly walk down the hall toward your apartment. “What about her mom?”

Pope winces like he’s picking an old wound open. “My mother happened.”

“Smurf, right?”

“Yeah.” Pope wrestles with how to put it for a while. He wants to be honest. He wants to let you in. But that doesn’t make it easy. “Well, she’s…I don’t even know how to put it. She’s not a good person. And we all grew up with a lot of illegal shit happening. Stealing, drugs, prostitutes, all sorts of things.” He leans on your door frame and says quickly, “Anyway, she didn’t like Lena’s mom. Thought she was betraying our family and working with the cops. So she, ah…”

His voice trails off in a way that makes it clearer than words ever could.

With your heart slamming against your ribs, you whisper, “Does Lena know?”

“No,” he sighs back. His eyes are far away and glassy. Lost in memory and lost in the future. “Maybe when she’s older. I don’t know. I don’t want to ruin even more things for her. She doesn’t ever want to talk about it; I don’t even know what the hell her dad told her.”

“You have one hell of a life, Pope Cody.”

“Yeah. I do.” Then he shakes his head as if he’s pushing thoughts away by force. After a beat, he lifts his eyes to yours and murmurs gently, like it’s a secret, “My name’s Andrew. My real name.”

Nibbling your lip for a second, you check, “You prefer to be called Andrew?”

“By you, yeah.”

“By me?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” You bend forward and press a soft kiss to his cheek that he’s going to feel the rest of the night, if not the rest of his life. “Thanks for getting me home safe, Andrew.”

The day had already got off to a bad start: you’d got up late because the alarm hadn’t gone off; you’d had to put on a slightly creased shirt because your theory — seemingly foolproof until now — that a chair could serve as an official coat hanger had failed for the first time; and, to top it all off, your headphones had run out of battery halfway through the tube journey.

Even so, you convinced yourself that it was nothing more than an absurd streak of bad luck, one of those crooked mornings that seem determined to drive you mad before you even get to work. Everything would be fine, you thought, as soon as you walked through the company’s automatic doors.

But the worst of it all had arrived at exactly 12:34 a.m., when the stream of coffee had soaked the milk in your cup and most of your colleagues were, like you, taking a few minutes’ break.

As every year, a new intern had joined the company and, on this occasion, Joe — that onboarding technician who seemed to become far too familiar far too quickly — had been assigned a young girl with tanned skin and eyes as bright as stars.

The young woman gazed expectantly at every wall, every piece of paper and every chair, as if that minimalist aesthetic were a source of great admiration. You smiled to yourself, for it was a vivid reminder of the time when you were that girl with diamond-like eyes, almost two years ago now.

“She should get out of here while she still can,” said one of your colleagues, nodding towards the new girl.

You rolled your eyes.

“It’s not that bad.”

"With the position you have, it’s only natural you’d say that..." she said again, and this time, she gave you a little nudge.

You raised an eyebrow and turned to look at her, but she had already turned away and joined the conversation the larger group was having.

You hadn’t understood her comment.

Or rather, you wanted to play dumb and pretend not to understand.

You decided not to make a big deal of it and let a faint smile play on your lips as you clasped your navy blue cup tightly in your hands.

You joined the group conversation too, though the topic you’d been chatting about had sunk into the depths of your mind’s sea of oblivion in the face of the tragedy that unfolded at that moment.

Joe walked over to you, a smug smile on his lips, with that girl trailing behind him like a shadow.

He introduced you one by one, as if you were merchandise in a shop window, waiting to be chosen for your professional qualities.

Each name was accompanied by two skills, your position in the company, and some spot-on comment typical of Joe.

You expected to hear praise on a par with what he was lavishing on your colleagues — whom he praised with almost ridiculous rhetoric as if they were Cicero himself reincarnated, or whose leadership he admired as if they were commanders of a medieval army — yet, when your turn came, Joe gave a crooked smile, the sort you’d pictured many times before and knew never bode well.

“She loves doing favours… especially for our boss behind closed doors,” said Joe after mentioning your name and your position in the company.

The hand that was shaking the new girl’s came to an abrupt halt, and the smile in your eyes began to fade. You turned to look at him, your brow slightly furrowed.

“Pardon?”

“It’s just… she earns a lot of money for a secretary,” he explained.

You stood there for a few seconds staring at him, paralysed, almost unable to believe such a comment. Your breath caught in the blink of an eye.

The room fell into absolute silence, with the only sound being your heart pounding in your ears; yet it was that lack of noise from your colleagues that made you feel deafened.

You turned to look at your other colleagues, who sat there looking serious. Some had their gaze fixed on some point other than the conversation, as if they were abstaining from that moment; and others were just about to burst out laughing in front of you to show you how much they’d enjoyed that comment.

Your eyes turned to the new girl, who was looking at you with a hint of pity. You noticed how her hand squeezed yours lightly, almost as if to comfort you, and that was what snapped you out of your state of shock.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” you managed to say as you turned your head to look at him.

He just burst out laughing.

“Hey, don’t take it like that,” said Joe, that ‘like that’ laden with every ounce of condescension in the world.

“I don’t think there’s any other way to take it.”

You let go of the young woman’s hand and smiled at no one in particular. You left the room and, in the corridor, allowed yourself the luxury of closing your eyes for a second.

You rested your head against the blue tiles of the twelfth-floor bathroom.

You had been sitting in that corner formed by the wall and the toilet for fifteen minutes, as if you wanted to be swallowed up by the sea of tiles on either side. You knew this because your professional self was used to automatically glancing at the watch adorning your left wrist, as if you had to submit a report on what had happened within a set time limit, and not simply because you’d been sitting there for half an hour with your knees pressed against your chest, your eyes completely watery and plunged into utter agony.

The palms of your hands were completely cold and wouldn’t stop trembling, clutching tightly at your legs and part of your black skirt, as if the fabric or your flesh were the only thing tying them to reality.

Your heart was pumping blood rapidly and you felt that, at any moment, it was going to burst out of your chest.

The air, on the other hand, entered your lungs sparingly and irregularly, due to the sobs and the turmoil in your mind.

You brought the hands that were wrapped around your legs up to your face and hid it. You felt as though your frozen fingers were being burned by your hot skin and wet by the rivers running down your cheeks.

Breathing in for four seconds, holding it for another four, and breathing out slowly over four seconds as well; that was what had helped you at twenty, in a time you didn’t want to remember and which you now hated was becoming intertwined with the current situation simply because you were performing that technique your psychologist had advised you to use.

“With the job you have, it’s only natural you’d say that...”

Breathing in for four seconds.

“She loves doing favours… especially for our boss behind closed doors.”

Holding it for another four.

“It’s just… she earns a lot of money for a secretary.”

And breathing out slowly over four seconds as well.

You closed your eyes tightly and pressed your lips together.

The worst thing wasn’t that they said it; the worst thing was that they weren’t entirely wrong, and that was something you’d been carrying around for over a year: the fact that you couldn’t stop looking at your boss, yet you couldn’t look him in the eye either.

The worst thing was that it wasn’t just about sex; you’d actually fallen in love with him.

The problem with falling in love with your boss was that it was exactly as stupid as it sounded, and you knew it. You knew it because you were the very same person who’d laughed when you watched Fifty Shades of Grey, claiming that no boss could be hot enough to make you forget you were being exploited at work, let alone make you fall in love with him.

And yet, you’d finished university, joined this company, and Baelor Targaryen—who was more than fifteen years your senior—had become your boss.

The thing is, the problem wasn’t the age gap—because if that had been it, it would have remained a mere fetish—but rather that Baelor was kind and everything a boss shouldn’t be.

He was the sort of man who remembered his clients’ children’s names, who apologised when he was late even if it was someone else’s fault, who politely reprimanded someone even if they’d botched a report that would cost him hundreds of golden dragons.

You’d fallen in love with him because once you walked into his office and found him with his glasses perched at the tip of his nose and his mobile held at arm’s length, trying to take a photo of a cactus he’d just bought to put on his desk.

“Mr Targaryen, do you need anything?” you asked as you stood by the door watching the scene.

“I need you to help me take a photo of this,” he explained, in his calm voice, staring at the screen in confusion. “It turns out the photos are in black and white and now I don’t know how to change it.”

You walked over, trying not to smile, and took his mobile. You didn’t even know how he’d selected a filter in the camera app — though you assumed it was because he’d tapped the screen at random — but in less than a second, the photo of the cactus was taken.

"That’s it, that’s it," said Baelor, watching your actions intently, as if he were in the presence of a computer expert. "Can you send it to my kids? I’d like to get their opinion."

Your cheeks flushed slightly as you exited the camera app and opened WhatsApp, wondering why on earth you found a man with two children who didn’t understand basic computing so hot.

“Is this the one?” you asked, pointing to a group called ‘Family’, whose profile picture was Baelor with two boys a few years younger than you. You felt publicly embarrassed for a split second when you thought about what his children might think if they saw someone your age pining for their father.

“Yes,” he replied, and you pressed on. You felt like a stranger at that moment, and, even though you struggled to stop yourself from looking more than you should, you couldn’t help but glance at the large photo Baelor had sent that morning with the caption ‘Good Morning’, set against purple flowers and a garish green background. You tried not to laugh. “Right, send it and write…” He leaned back slightly in his chair. After a few seconds, he spoke again: “Spotted this little fellow today.”

By the Gods, you couldn’t stand that morning. It was incredible how much of a boomer your boss was—and how much you liked him.

You simply followed his orders and wrote everything down to the letter.

You’d fallen for your boss because, after he’d asked you to stay late with him to prepare the documents for the deal with Lannisport Consulting, he’d insisted on waiting for you whilst you shut down the computers.

“It’s late,” he’d said, with that characteristic simplicity of his. “I’ll drive you home.”

“No, don’t worry,” you replied at the time, your cheeks flushed and your scarf pulled up over your nose. “I’d better take the tube.”

And yet, you’d ended up in his car, because he’d insisted again and you no longer knew how to say no to him.

You talked about the agreement and a podcast on medieval history that he’d started listening to on your recommendation. At that moment, with the city lights reflecting off the dark windows of the sports car, you wondered how you could still have your clothes on whilst a man in his forties was talking to you about the Middle Ages.

Basically, you’d fallen in love with him because it was him, and only he had that peculiar way of caring for you that you’d never seen in any other man in your life.

At last, a man was treating you the way you deserved to be treated, and that was what made the tears run down your thighs.

So, yes, you’d been completely obsessed with your boss for two years and had been hiding it like a champion, because apparently, four years at university and a master’s degree in business management had trained you to keep a straight face in difficult situations, which meant being able to look at Baelor Targaryen whilst he explained something to you, leaning on the edge of the desk in his usual way, his sleeve rolled up to his elbow, and reply with a pertinent question without your voice trembling.

You had to admit it was by far your greatest professional achievement.

Or so you thought, of course, until the comments started coming in.

You hugged yourself and rested your cheek against the cold wall, feeling as though you were losing all the strength in your body. You were completely shattered, you felt exposed, ashamed, and you just needed to scream, even though your voice had died away in your throat.

You were in love with your boss, and yet what you felt for Baelor Targaryen had absolutely nothing to do with your pay cheque or your contract or the fear of losing either of them.

You did your job well because you were good at it. You’d been good at it before you met him and you’d continue to be so afterwards, in any office, for anyone.

The fact that you’d fallen in love with this particular man was a completely separate issue, and it was yours, and so you dealt with it alone, in the depths of your mind, not under his desk.

But you understood—from all the blows life had dealt you—though you didn’t forgive it, that no one in the office seemed capable of accepting the simple idea that you were competent in your job, because it was easier to say there was a bed in the middle and a quid pro quo.

You let out a shaky sigh and closed your eyes again, feeling your wet eyelashes against your skin. This time, your body allowed you to breathe normally and, little by little, your breathing returned to its usual rhythm.

You stayed on the floor for a few more seconds, hearing the door open in the background and the sound of heels echoing against the spotless floor.

You took another deep breath.

And suddenly, you felt a slight tremor on your right side.

You decided to ignore it and closed your eyes again.

Your mobile wouldn’t stop vibrating.

You wiped away your tears with difficulty as you pulled your mobile phone from your right pocket. You tried to read the message through the mist of tears that had clouded your eyes.

As soon as you can, come by my office. — B.

Your heart skipped a beat and you let the screen go dark again. You sighed once more and wiped the tears from your cheeks.

Baelor was the last and the first thing you wanted to see at that moment.

You wanted to run back home and flee that building for the rest of your life, torment yourself in your room for the next few months and cry until you were dry.

And yet, you wanted to see him too. You wanted to revel once more in his calmness—the kind that persisted even as the world ended—and in his voice, because you knew he would have the perfect words for this situation. Even though you couldn’t explain to him what had happened, it was enough for you just to hear him talk about any new report, as if his way of making sense of the world could also make sense of yours.

You slowly got up from that space you’d made your own for the last twenty-five minutes. You smoothed out your black skirt and blouse and unlocked the cubicle door.

You flushed the toilet, as if you wanted to lie to yourself that you hadn’t been crying, and walked towards the washbasins, the sound of your heels following you like a soundtrack.

You rested your hands on one of the sinks and looked at yourself in the mirror. Your dark circles were smeared with mascara, like two tar-black fishbowls; your eyes were the same colour as your cheeks, and your hair was flying in every possible direction.

You took a piece of paper and dipped it lightly in the tap water. You wiped away those ink stains whilst listening to the sound of the rushing water being swallowed up by the drain.

Once that task was sufficiently done, you smoothed your hair and wet your hands, then ran them over your forehead, as if it were a ritual to wipe the slate clean.

You sighed one last time when you felt relatively presentable and stepped out of the bathroom.

Two minutes later, you had the notepad in your left hand and the pen in your right, your knuckles tapping on the door of your boss’s office.

When you heard your boss’s voice, you carefully opened the door to his office and stepped inside cautiously. You closed the door behind you and looked at him: he was sitting in his leather chair, in that calm posture of his, whilst fiddling with the rings on his fingers.

Baelor’s office had always inspired an almost ridiculous sense of respect in you. It was spacious, bright and tidy, with a large window spanning one of the walls, letting in a clean light that accentuated the room’s austerity.

The furniture was elegant, as everything was finished in perfectly varnished dark wood, from the desk itself, piled high with papers, to the built-in bookcase behind him.

Only a few family photographs broke the rigidity of the whole, and they were the only thing in that room that reminded you that Baelor was the man you had fallen in love with.

“Do you need anything, Mr Targaryen?” you asked after clearing your throat. You fiddled with the pen you were holding between your fingers.

“Sit down,” you heard him say.

You swallowed and looked at the chair in front of his desk, the one reserved for high-ranking figures who came to do business with your boss. You approached it slowly, as if the seat filled you with dread, for anyone who sat there was there to discuss serious matters.

“I’ve heard something happened between you and your colleagues today,” Baelor said as you sat down. You placed the pen and notepad on his desk. “A series of unfortunate remarks.”

“Nothing happened,” you replied in a low voice.

Baelor leaned back slightly in his chair and stared at you with those two-coloured eyes, raising one eyebrow slightly, all the while twirling the ring on his middle finger.

You felt a shiver run down your spine.

“The new girl told me; there’s no need to pretend,” he said after a few seconds of deathly silence, during which only the rapid beating of your heart could be heard.

You nodded slowly and pictured that young woman going to tell Baelor, mortified with shame and fear, that she had overheard those unfair comments. You promised yourself you’d buy her a coffee if you saw her at the office again.

“I spoke to HR this morning,” Baelor continued. “And I’m going to speak to the team at Friday’s meeting. I’ll make it clear that your position depends on your work, which is excellent, and that any speculation about your private life or mine is exactly that: speculation, with no basis whatsoever.”

You were speechless at that remark. You nodded again, almost automatically, and fidgeted nervously with your fingers under his gaze.

The last thing you thought you’d be doing that day was discussing this with Baelor.

“You didn’t have to do that,” you finally replied, after weighing your words for a few seconds. “They’ll think you’re making a big deal of it because it’s true.”

He didn’t even crack a smile; he simply continued to watch you with that measured expression.

“I stopped caring what people thought many years ago.”

You nodded again, more as a form of self-protection than as a response. You swallowed hard and lowered your gaze slightly, almost overwhelmed by those eyes of different colours.

“Then why do you do it?” you asked at last. You should have ended the conversation there, stood up and left; yet, as always, your mouth worked faster than your mind, and now your cheeks were slightly flushed with embarrassment.

Baelor didn’t hesitate and continued his mesmerising dance with his ringed fingers. He let out a small sigh before speaking.

“For you,” he paused for a millisecond, “because no one deserves to have their work disparaged because of an absurd rumour.”

You nodded again, much to your regret, and pressed your lips together slightly. You could clearly feel your cheeks growing hotter.

“Thank you.”

"You can take the rest of the day off," he finally said, and you looked up immediately: it was a mistake, because he was already looking at you in that way of his that made you melt.

"No, I'm fine, I can work," you replied quickly, a nervous smile spreading across your face. "I'd rather keep myself busy… It's better than being at home thinking about it."

Baelor nodded slightly and tidied some papers on his desk. It was a sight to behold, even just watching him move, because there was something about him that made even shuffling a few simple reports look like a work of art.

“How long have you been thinking about it?”

“Not long.”

He raised an eyebrow: “How long?”

You cleared your throat and went back to fidgeting with your fingers.

“I might have spent half an hour in the ladies’ toilet,” you said, in a lower voice.

Baelor didn’t reply straight away. He finished moving the papers to the spot he’d already chosen and, when he’d finished his task without haste, stepped away from the desk.

He took a step towards you and you resisted the urge to stand up. He sat down on the desk, right in front of you, and you had to look up to see his face. You prayed to the Seven that Baelor wouldn’t notice your cheeks were as hot as the sun.

“Why didn’t you tell me anything?” He lowered his voice and you shivered slightly.

“Because it’s none of your business.”

“I think I’ve established that it is.”

“It’s my reputation,” you countered, almost desperately.

“It’s mine too.”

“Yours isn’t at the same risk.”

Baelor stood still.

“I know,” he paused. “But I’m also involved in this one way or another.”

That sentence was what made you feel a kind of dizziness in your chest, as if the ground weren’t really ground and as if those words were what had sealed the fate of your job.

From the very beginning, that rumour had involved Baelor and you; yet it wasn’t until he himself uttered it with such calmness that you realised this whole situation had escalated into something more that terrified you.

You would probably hand in your letter of resignation tomorrow morning.

You felt your eyes stinging again and knew that this was the starting gun for leaving the office.

You sat up too quickly, causing the chair to scrape slightly against the floor.

"I think I should get back to work," you said, summoning the last shred of composure left in your body.

But before you could flee, you felt Baelor’s rough hand clasp yours, stopping you in your tracks. He rose from the table and stood mere inches away from you.

Your breath came in gasps as you felt your bodies draw together. You looked up and quickly brought your fingers to your eye, trying to stifle the tear that was already making its way down your cheek; however, Baelor was already closer, raising his hand slowly and calmly wiping the tear from your cheek. When he finished, he did not withdraw his hand.

The office was plunged into a deathly silence, broken only by the sound of your hearts and breaths, dancing in unison.

His two-coloured pupils met yours and you thought you could feel the air draining from your lungs.

“This isn’t a good idea,” you protested, in a very low voice. “We’re…”

“I know,” he said in the same tone.

“And you’re twenty years older than me…”

“I know.” He lowered his voice further, and the hand resting on your cheek slid down to your chin. “Tell me to stop.”

You looked at him for a second that felt like an eternity and shook your head very slowly.

That was all Baelor needed to allow himself to raise his other hand slowly, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear with almost unbearable tenderness.

He brushed your lips before kissing you, as if asking you once more if you wanted to continue this, and in that moment, it was you who pressed your lips against his—the only answer Baelor desired at that moment.

At first, it was merely the simple pressure of one mouth against another, almost chaste. Yet the office was too silent, and the walls seemed to have burst into flames.

He pulled you towards him, and that gesture caused something within you both to melt away in that instant, as if whatever had been holding you back had dissolved. As if that photo of the cactus and the car journey had led to this.

You parted your lips and the kiss slowed. The hand he’d placed on your wrist found the fabric of your shirt. He breathed against your mouth.

“I’ve spent my whole life governed by what I ‘should’ do. I should be the pillar. I should be the example,” he said in a deep voice. “I want to stop thinking about what I ‘should’.”

“Don’t think, then,” you murmured against his lips, and they met again.

You raised your hands and your fingers clung to the expensive fabric of the lapels of his black suit. Baelor let out a groan from the depths of his throat that sounded like surrender and, in that instant, he took you by the waist, lifting you effortlessly and sitting you on the edge of the solid wooden table.

Pens scattered and papers flew off like a shower of artificial snow, though you were both too preoccupied to notice.

He pulled back just enough to look at you and saw the hesitation in your gaze, that shyness so typical of you.

“You’re trembling,” he whispered against the skin of your cheek as he gently caressed the side of your thigh.

“You’re… you’re much older than me. And you’re my boss. I don’t know if I’m doing this right.”

Baelor smiled against your cheek and you felt his ringed, veiny hands rest on your thigh. He took your hands and placed them on his chest, letting you feel the frantic beating of his heart.

“I’m the one who’s out of practice, make no mistake… Let me show you what I want. Or better still, just tell me what you need.”

You nodded slightly, your lips parted, and you felt yourself getting wet.

He moved with authority and positioned himself between your legs. He ran his hands along the sides of your body, and you felt his rough fingertips against the fabric of your white shirt as his mouth moved towards the hollow of your neck.

He undid a few buttons from the row that adorned your shirt, and you felt the cold sting your bare skin. You shuddered at the sensation of Baelor’s tongue on that spot that had been exposed.

Baelor kissed you gently, unhurriedly, treating your body as something precious, like a jewel being polished with care. He wasn’t treating you as his assistant, but as a woman, and that was bringing you to the brink of collapse.

“You’re stunning,” he whispered as he looked up after being busy with your collarbone. “I wondered if you’d be as sweet as you seem.”

You couldn’t help but let out a moan that was muffled by his lips. You heard the buckle of his trousers click, and then you felt the warmth of his hands lifting your skirt.

He pushed your knickers aside, brushing against your clitoris for just long enough to make you let out a small sigh.

Finally, he sank into you with a gentle yet commanding movement, and you couldn’t help but let out a moan against his lips. You arched your back, causing your lips to part.

“Look at me,” he ordered, cupping your chin with his fingers.

Your eyes were glazed over and your pupils had dilated from that sensation of pleasure. You tried to focus on Baelor’s face, but it was taking you longer than it should.

“Tell me you want this. Not because I’m your boss, but because you desire me,” he said, squeezing your chin very lightly. “Tell me you desire me.”

You pressed your lips together to stop any such sound from escaping.

“I want you,” you sobbed, your vulnerability finally surfacing. It seemed as though a weight had finally been lifted from your shoulders with that confession. “I’ve wanted you since the very first day, Baelor.”

"Mhm, so now I'm Baelor," he let out a short, rough laugh and began to move. "No longer Mr Targaryen."

His rhythm was steady and powerful, yet without losing that tenderness.

"I'm sorry, Mr Targ…" you murmured as you bit your lip and closed your eyes.

"Shh," he pressed his lips against your cheek again. "Call me Baelor, I’m just Baelor to you."

You trembled at his voice and your hands clenched the hem of his jacket.

“Like that. Just like that. Open yourself up to me. Give me everything,” he whispered in your ear, and you instinctively rested your head on his shoulder.

The friction increased and a knot of heat tightened in your gut. You wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling him closer to you and erasing every inch between you. You could feel his manhood sliding in and out of you, making wet sounds that echoed throughout the room.

“Baelor… please…” you moaned against the fabric of his jacket.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured hoarsely, holding you close. “I’ve got you. Let yourself go. I’m here with you.”

A violent wave of pleasure left you breathless and you squeezed Baelor’s arm involuntarily as tears began to form in the corners of your eyes.

When Baelor’s body tensed, you knew he had reached climax too. He rested his forehead against yours as the warmth of his seed trickled between your thighs.

For several minutes, the only sound in the room was the synchronised rhythm of your breathing.

Baelor didn’t pull away immediately: he wrapped his arms around you as he caught his breath.

“You’re magnificent,” he whispered, “perfect both on and off the job.”

You couldn’t help but let out a laugh at that remark, which was muffled by the fabric of Baelor’s jacket.

Finally, Baelor moved, slowly pulling away from between your legs and quickly pulling his trousers back into place. He also helped you get dressed, fastening every button he’d dared to undo and running his fingertips over your skirt, after wiping away the excess of his semen.

Baelor stepped back until he was a safe distance from you and smoothed the sleeves of his jacket, once again presenting that immaculate appearance he always displayed at the firm.

You looked at the papers and pens scattered across the table and part of the floor.

The first thing you thought was that they were right.

Not about the version they’d concocted, not about the deal or the price or anything they’d whispered in the shared kitchen on the twelfth floor. But they were right about the outcome. In the stark, unvarnished fact that you’d ended up in your boss’s bed, and that no one in that office would ever know it had been for the wrong reasons—that is, for the only reasons that didn’t fit into their version of the story.

Because you hadn’t done it for the job. You’d done it because you’d been in love with him for years and because he’d wiped a tear from your cheek.

But the result was the same. That was what was stirring something inside you.

Baelor noticed your troubled expression.

“Are you all right?” he asked, taking your fingers in his hand and clasping them. “Have I hurt you?”

You shook your head slowly: “The rumours… now they’ll be true. People will say…”

Baelor moved closer again, and that simple gesture alone gave you a sense of security.

“No one will find out, and I haven’t changed my mind about Friday’s meeting,” he said, his voice calm. “This doesn’t change anything: you’re still here because of your job.”

“And tomorrow?” Your eyes locked onto his. “What will happen tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow I’ll be your boss. I’ll be demanding, I’ll be fair, and I’ll probably ask you to redo the forecasts for the third quarter.”

You laughed softly, and your need for validation was partially soothed by the reassurance in his words.

“And after work?”

Now it was Baelor who smiled slightly.

"If you’re free, I can take you out for dinner after work."

You shivered and your cheeks flushed again. You looked down shyly and smiled.

"Yes, I’m free."