*cries in horny*

He's watching you. You can't help but notice that Bobby doesn't stare the way other men stare, heavy and obvious.

He watches. There's a difference. Staring is passive. Watching is a skill.

You can see it in the way his eyes move: cataloguing, framing, composing. Those eyes. Pale blue, sharp, amused in a way that suggests he's always in on a joke nobody else has heard yet. They land on your face and stay there with an intensity that makes you want to look away and also makes you want to never look away and you're not going to think about that right now. Even in a shitty diner booth with fluorescent lighting and a crack running through the formica, Bobby Franklin is looking at you like he's already thinking about angles.

"And you're—Terrence said you do everything yourself? Shoot, edit, all of it?" you croak out, forcing yourself to swallow a mouthful of coffee.

"I don't trust anyone else with the camera." He says it the way other people say they don't trust anyone else with their car keys. Flat. Non-negotiable. His fingers are wrapped around the coffee mug and you notice—you're noticing too much, you need to stop noticing—the veins on the back of his hands, the way the leather jacket sits on his shoulders like it grew there, the silver hoop catches light every time he tilts his head. "It's a one-man operation. Well." The twitch again. Almost a smile. "Usually two-man. One behind the lens, one in front."

You nod. Push the eggs. Your fork makes a sound against the plate that's louder than it should be because neither of you is talking and the diner is mostly empty. The jukebox in the corner is broken and has been broken since Reagan. Your knee is bouncing under the table. You press your palm flat on your thigh to stop it. It only partially works.

"How behind are you?" Bobby drawls.

Your head snaps up. "What?"

"On rent," he clarifies patiently. "Terrence said you were in trouble. How behind?"

He leans forward when he asks it and the chain shifts against his collarbone and you catch a breath of him leather and something underneath, warm, clean, just skin—and your stomach coils.

You're nervous. You're nervous and attracted and the two are braiding together into something that makes it hard to hold your fork steady.

This would be easier if he were sleazy. If he looked like what you'd imagined when Terrence first explained the arrangement. Some greasy guy with a moustache and a waterbed. Instead he looks like this. Sharp jaw and piercing, amused eyes and an earring, a chain and a full mouth that does that little twitch and you're in so much trouble.

You put the fork down. Two months. You're two months behind because the temp agency dried up and the waitressing gig fell through and you've been living on ramen and the leftovers your neighbour leaves outside her door in tupperware containers that you're pretty sure are meant for the stray cats but you're not proud enough to care anymore.

"Two months," you admit, staring down at the eggs. Not looking at him. Looking at him is becoming a problem.

Bobby whistles. Low. Through his teeth. "Well shit. Landlord breathing down your neck?"

You scoff, swallowing down the bitterness. "He's past breathing. He's at written notices."

Bobby leans back in the booth. The vinyl creaks beneath him. He's got one arm stretched along the back of the seat and the other hand wrapped around the coffee mug and the morning light from the window is hitting the side of his face and you think, abstractly, the way you'd think about a painting in a museum: he's beautiful. Sharp angles. Pale eyes. Cali tan and an ease in how he slouches in his seat.

"The money's good," he says suddenly, tongue poking his cheek as he drags his attention back towards you. "That's the first thing. I'm not gonna bullshit you. It's not Hollywood money, obviously, but for Santa Clara? For a couple hours of work?" He tilts his head. "It'd cover your rent. Easy. One shoot."

You stare, unblinking. Sceptical. "One shoot."

"One shoot."

You pick up the fork again. Put it down again. Your fingers won't stop moving.

"Look—" Bobby leans forward. Elbows on the table. The leather jacket he's wearing creaks with the movement, and he's closer now and the watching has intensified into something that feels less like a camera and more like a hand on your skin. "I'm not trying to pressure you into shit. Terrence vouched for you because I asked him if he knew anyone and he said he knew a girl who was real smart and broke and—"

He stops. Mid-sentence. The watching goes still. There's a shift in his expression. A loosening, a slip, the mask of professional detachment developing a crack.

"Shit," he says softly. Almost to himself. "You're pretty. Real pretty."

You bristle. The flinch is automatic. A full-body tightening that starts in your shoulders and works down, because you know this game, you've played this game, the compliment that's actually a crowbar, the flattery designed to pry you open. Men in diners don't tell you you're pretty because they mean it. They tell you you're pretty because they want something and that something is usually between your legs.

"Don't do that," you say sharply. Your voice is harder than you intended.

Bobby blinks. The crack in his expression widens and what's behind it isn't a game. It's surprise. Genuine, unperformative surprise, the kind that creases the corners of his eyes and makes him look younger than however old he is.

"Do what?"

"The—flattery thing. The buttering up. I don't need you to tell me I'm pretty to get me to agree, I already—" Your throat tightens, and you knot your fingers in your lap, setting your jaw. "I'm already here. I'm already desperate enough to be sitting in this diner talking about—so you don't need to—"

"Hey." His hand comes up. Not touching. Just a gesture. A pause button. "I wasn't buttering you up. I was just—" He runs a hand through his hair, clipping his sunglasses. He looks, for a half-second, almost flustered. "I was looking at you and it came out. That's it. That's the whole thing. You're pretty and my mouth moved before my brain did and I'm—" He picks up the coffee. Takes a long sip. Sets it down. "Sorry. Professional hazard. I notice faces."

You stare at each other in silence.

He wasn't mocking you.

The realisation lands with a warmth that starts in your chest and spreads to places you weren't expecting.

He wasn't mocking you. He was sitting across from you in a vinyl booth and the light caught your face and he thought you were pretty and he said so because his mouth was faster than his filter. And now he's drinking burnt coffee to cover the fact that he's embarrassed about it.

"Okay," you say quietly.

He pauses, cup halfway to his mouth. "Okay?"

"Okay, tell me the terms."

Bobby sets the coffee down. The professionalism clicks back into place but the tips of his ears are still pink and you file that away somewhere warm and private.

"I shoot everything at my place. My equipment, my setup. VHS. I've got two cameras, one static, one handheld. The handheld's the one that matters. That's the one I operate." He taps the table with his index finger. Rhythmic. A habit. "I edit everything myself. I distribute through a guy I know in the valley who handles the duplication and the mailing list. You never have to talk to him. You never have to talk to anyone. Your face, your name, none of it goes on the packaging unless you want it to."

"What name do you use?" you ask, curious despite yourself.

"For me? Bobby." He shrugs. "I'm not creative about it."

"And for—"

"Whatever you want. Pick something. Pick nothing. Some girls just go by a first name. Some make something up. One girl I worked with went by the name of her landlord's dog. Said it felt like revenge." The almost-smile again. "Point is: it's yours. The whole thing is yours. You say stop, I stop. You say no to something, it's no. I don't push. I don't coerce. I don't do anything you haven't agreed to beforehand and if you change your mind halfway through, the camera goes off and we're done. No questions. No attitude."

He says all of this in the same tone he'd use to explain how a camera works. Methodical. Clear. Like he's said it before and means it every time.

"How much?" you ask.

He tells you.

You put your fork down carefully because the number he just said would cover two months of rent and groceries and the electricity bill that's been sitting on your kitchen counter turning into a small paper monument to your failure.

"One shoot," you say again, making sure.

"One shoot," he echoes with a nod. "Couple hours. You walk out with cash."

Hope and desperation surge up your spine, working your tongue. "Cash?"

"I don't do checks. Checks leave paper trails and paper trails make people nervous." He drains the last of the coffee. Grimaces. Apparently even Bobby Franklin has limits and Moreno's coffee has found them. "You don't have to decide now. Think about it. Call me."

He pulls a napkin from the dispenser and writes a number on it in handwriting that's surprisingly neat for someone who looks like he's never filled out a form in his life. Slides it across the table.

You look at the napkin. Look at him. then back at the napkin.

You pick it up, folding it neatly.

"Tomorrow," you say. "I can come tomorrow."

Bobby's eyebrows rise. Just slightly. Then he nods slowly. "Tomorrow works."

He pays for your eggs. You don't argue. You should argue but the rent was due six days ago and the eggs were $2.15 and the pride you'd normally spend on "I can pay for my own breakfast" has been liquidated to cover more pressing debts.

At the door of the diner he holds it open for you. Not performatively. Just does it. And when you pass him your shoulder brushes his chest and he smells like that warm thing again, the underneath thing, and his pale eyes track your face one more time and he says "See you tomorrow" in a voice that's dropped half a register and the warmth in your chest migrates south and you walk to your car thinking fuck, fuck, fuck, what am I doing?

You're covering rent. That's what you're doing.

That's all you're doing.

His apartment is above a furniture store.

You stand on the sidewalk for four minutes before you go up. The building is nondescript. Beige stucco, iron railings, a set of stairs on the outside that lead to a door that needs painting. There's a cat on the landing that looks at you with the serene judgment of a creature that has never once had to worry about rent.

You envy the cat greatly.

You're wearing a sundress because you didn't know what to wear and the sundress felt like a compromise between "trying too hard" and "not trying enough." You changed three times.

The first outfit was too casual. The second was too much. The sundress is yellow and you hate that you care what colour it is.

You knock.

Bobby opens the door and the first thing you register is that he's not wearing the leather jacket.

T-shirt. White, thin, cropped in a way that shows the shape of him underneath and is making it difficult to maintain eye contact. Jeans slung low on his hips. Bare feet on the hardwood. His hair is damp from the shower and pushed back off his face and without the sunglasses holding it up you can see the full architecture of him.

The jaw, sharper in natural light than in the diner's dimness. The earring. The chain, sitting in the hollow of his throat, rising and falling with his breathing.

He looks good in his own apartment. Relaxed in a way he wasn't at Moreno's, the professional edge softened into something more lived-in.

He leans against the doorframe and says, "Hey. Come in" and the drawl is thicker in the morning.

You're going to be professional about this. You're not going to think about his forearms, which are now visible because the t-shirt sleeves are short and his arms are lean and tanned and there's a vein running from his wrist to his elbow that you're staring at. Stop staring at it.

The apartment is small and clean and full of light. Not the fluorescent light of the diner but real light, California morning light, pouring through windows that face east.

There are photographs on the walls, black and white, and you realise after a second that he took them. They're good. They're better than good. A bridge in fog. A woman's hands. A street at night, wet, reflecting. He has an eye. You knew that from the diner, from the way he watched, but seeing it on the walls makes it real.

Bobby Franklin has an eye and he uses it for this and also for what you're about to do and the cognitive dissonance of "artist" and "adult filmmaker" is something you're going to have to sit with.

"Coffee?" he asks, padding toward the kitchen. Bare feet on linoleum.

The t-shirt rides up slightly when he reaches for a mug on the top shelf and there's a strip of skin above his waistband and the muscle that cuts along his hip and you look away so fast you nearly give yourself whiplash.

"Please."

He pours you a cup. You stand in his kitchen and drink it and it's good. Your hands are shaking and the cup rattles against the saucer and you set it down before he notices except he's already noticed.

"Hey," he calls out, leaning against the counter. Arms crossed. The t-shirt pulling across his chest. His stare is piercing, amused, reading you the way they read you at the diner except now there's nowhere to hide behind a menu and a plate of eggs. "We don't have to do anything today. We can just talk. Get you comfortable. No pressure."

"I'm fine," you force out.

He gives you a sceptical once over. "You're shaking."

"I'm fine and I'm shaking. Both can be true."

His mouth the twitches, the almost-smile that you're beginning to understand is Bobby's version of a laugh. A contained one. Controlled. Like even his amusement is something he runs through a filter before letting it out. But his eyes crinkle at the corners and the amusement reaches them and it's warm, genuinely warm, and some of the tightness in your chest loosens.

You talk.

He asks you questions. Mercifully not invasive ones, not the peeling-back kind. Surface questions. Where you grew up. How you know Terrence. What music you like. And you find yourself answering, not because he's charming (he is) but because he's easy. Bobby Franklin is easy to talk to in a way that contradicts everything about his sharp jaw and pale stare and the fact that there are two video cameras set up in his bedroom that you can see through the half-open door.

He listens the way he watches: completely, with his whole attention, like whatever you're saying is the only thing happening in the world. And he's funny. Dry, quick, a deadpan that sneaks up on you.

You laugh at something he says about Terrence and his face creases in a way you haven't seen before. Surprise. Pleasure. Like your laugh was an unexpected pleasure.

He tucks it away fast, smooths the expression back to amused neutrality, but you saw it. You saw it and it made your stomach warm.

An hour passes. Your hands stop shaking. You've stopped noticing the cameras through the doorway. You've started noticing other things.

The way he gestures when he talks about photography, loose and animated, the only time his cool composure fully drops. The way he licks his bottom lip when he's thinking. The way the chain shifts against his throat when he laughs. The pale eyes that keep finding your face and staying there a beat longer than conversation requires.

You're attracted to him. This is no longer a thing you can file under "irrelevant." This is a thing that is happening in your body, in the kitchen, in the warm light, and it's making the prospect of what comes next feel less like a transaction and more like something you might actually want and that's more frightening than the cameras.

He shows you the bedroom eventually.

It's not what you expected. No red lighting, no satin sheets, no sleazy backdrop. Just a bed—queen, white sheets, a quilt that looks like it came from someone's grandmother—and two cameras. One on a tripod in the corner, aimed at the bed. The other on the dresser, smaller, a different angle. Both VHS. Both off.

"The one in the corner is the wide shot," Bobby explains, standing in the doorway behind you. Professional. Tour guide. "It runs the whole time. Catches everything. The one on the dresser is for close-ups. I adjust it as we go. The handheld—" He nods toward a third camera sitting on the nightstand. "That's the one I use. That's the one that makes the money."

You nod, staring at the bed. The white sheets. The grandmother's quilt. The two dark eyes of the cameras. Your pulse is loud in your own ears.

"I'm sorry," you blurt out, not looking at him, still staring at the bed. "I'm being weird about this. I've obviously never—I haven't done anything like this before and I don't know how to—"

He kisses you.

His hand is on your jaw first, angling your face toward him. Gentle but sure, the confidence of someone who knows the effect he has and is choosing to use it kindly. And then his other hand comes up. Both hands cupping your face now, his palms warm against your cheeks, his thumbs resting along the line of your cheekbones, and his mouth finds yours.

The first press is soft. Almost chaste. Just the warmth of his lips settling against yours, testing, asking. You inhale sharply through your nose, and he catches it. Absorbs it. Tilts your face up with those hands and kisses you deeper.

Bobby's mouth opens yours. Coaxing, slow.

His bottom lip drags against yours, the faintest graze of teeth, and then his tongue follows. Warm, unhurried, curling against yours in a way that makes your knees actually weaken.

You've kissed people before. This is not that. This is Bobby Franklin kissing you with both hands cradling your face like you're worth holding and his tongue moving against yours with a patience that suggests he could do this for hours. Just this. Just the wet slide of his mouth on yours and the taste of good coffee and the way your breath mingles when he tilts his head and changes the angle and finds something deeper.

His thumb strokes your cheekbone. Back and forth. This light, rhythmic brush while his tongue curls against yours, while his bottom lip catches between your teeth and he makes a sound—small, low, a vibration you feel more than hear—and your hands are on his chest. When did your hands get on his chest?

You can feel his heartbeat through the white t-shirt, fast, faster than his relaxed composure suggests, and the knowledge that Bobby Franklin's heart is hammering while he kisses you makes you dizzy.

He tilts his head the other way. Your noses brush. The tip of his against the side of yours, a small warm nudge, almost playful.

He kisses the corner of your mouth. Your bottom lip. Takes it between his and sucks, gently, and your fingers curl into the fabric of his t-shirt and pull and the sound you make is swallowed by the warmth of him.

He pulls back.

Not far. An inch. Maybe two. His hands still on your face. His thumbs still on your cheekbones. His forehead nearly touching yours and you can feel his breath on your lips and his eyes are right there. Those pale, watchful, bright eyes, scanning your face. Reading you. Making sure.

Your lips are tingling. Your whole body is tingling. You're standing in a stranger's bedroom being held by the face and kissed like you've never been kissed before.

"Was—" Your voice is thin. Wrecked. He kissed your voice right out of you. "Was the camera rolling?"

Bobby smirks.

Up close, from two inches away, with his hands still warm on your face. One corner of his mouth lifting in that lazy, crooked, insufferable way. His eyes half-lidded. And it goes trough you like wildfire, flooding your nervous system with liquid heat.

"No," he answers huskily, his thumb tracing your cheekbone one more time. "Just felt like doing that."

He holds your gaze. One beat. Two. Three. Letting the smirk settle. Letting you feel the weight of it—the fact that he kissed you off-camera, off-clock, for no professional reason.

The fact that his heart is still hammering under your fists and his pupils are blown wide and he kissed you because he wanted to. Because you were standing in his bedroom apologising for being nervous and he looked at you and his mouth moved before his brain did. Again.

"Still okay?" he asks, softer now. The smirk gentling into something warmer.

"Yeah." Breathier than you want it to be. Your hands still in his t-shirt. "Yeah, I'm okay."

"Good." His hand drops from your jaw. Trails down your arm. Fingertips only, light enough to raise goosebumps, tracing the inside of your wrist where the pulse jumps. "I'm going to undress you now. Slow. Before the cameras go on. Just us. That alright?"

You nod.

He starts with the straps of the sundress. Easing them off your shoulders one at a time. Not pulling, guiding. His knuckles graze your collarbone and you shiver, his eyes tracking the shiver down your body with an attention that makes you feel like the only light source in the room.

"You wore yellow," he notes conversationally. Like he's remarking on the weather while his fingertips trace the neckline of your dress. "Looks good on you. Warm. Shows off your skin."

The dress pools at your feet. You're standing in his bedroom in your underwear and the morning light is on you and Bobby is looking at you the way he looked at you in the diner when his mouth got ahead of his brain.

"Pretty," he murmurs. Like he can't help it. Like the word just falls out of him when he sees you. His thumb traces your hip bone above the elastic of your underwear. "Real pretty."

This time you don't bristle.

He reaches past you. Flicks on the tripod camera. A tiny red light. Then the dresser camera. Another red light. Two eyes, open, watching.

"Don't think about them," Bobby says, his mouth near your ear. His hands settle on your waist, warm palms on bare skin. "Don't think about the cameras. Don't perform. Just feel me. Can you do that?"

You jerk your head. "I can try."

"That's all I'm asking." His lips brush your ear. Down. Along your jaw. The corner of your mouth. His hands slide up your ribcage and his thumbs trace the underwire of your bra and you exhale, shaky, and he catches it. "There you go. Just like that. Stay with me, yeah? I got you."

He unclasps your bra with one hand. Practiced, efficient, but the way he peels it away is anything but. Reverent, almost, easing the fabric off like he's unwrapping something valuable. The air hits your skin and your nipples tighten. Bobby's gaze drops and his jaw flexes and for a moment, just a moment, the professionalism wavers. His throat moves on a thick swallow.

"Lie down," he instructs, a little rougher than before. "On the bed. On your back."

You lie down. The sheets are cool beneath you, the quilt soft. on your skin

The light from the window falls across the bed in a warm band and you're naked except for your underwear and Bobby is standing over you still fully dressed and the power imbalance should feel wrong but it doesn't because his eyes are eating you alive and his hands are clenched at his sides and you realise, with a jolt that goes straight through you: he's holding himself back.

This is Bobby exercising control. This is what it looks like when he wants to touch something badly and is making himself wait.

He picks up the handheld camera. Lifts it to his eye. And something shifts in him. Visibly. The control locks in, the professional takes over, and he's Bobby-behind-the-lens. Steady. Composed. Seeing everything.

"Touch yourself," he says. Director voice. "Just your skin. Nothing heavy. Just run your hands over yourself. Get comfortable."

You do. Your own hands on your own body, palms skating over your stomach, your ribs, the swell of your breasts, and it feels strange and exhibitionistic but then Bobby says "gorgeous, just like that, you're doing so good" and the praise lands in the pit of your stomach like a lit match. Your back arches. Barely. Just enough.

"Yeah," Bobby breathes from behind the camera. "That's it. That's perfect. Look at you."

He films you touching yourself for what feels like hours and is probably three minutes. Then he sets the handheld down on the nightstand. Red light still blinking, and he crawls onto the bed.

Not between your legs. Beside you. Lying on his side, propped on one elbow, his face level with yours. Close enough that you can see the flecks of darker blue in his irises and the faint scar on his chin and the way his throat moves when he swallows. Still dressed. T-shirt. Jeans. Bare feet.

"Keep going," he murmurs, watching your hands on your own body. "Don't stop on my account."

Your hands move. Over your stomach. Up. And Bobby's hand joins them. One warm palm laid flat against your sternum, between your breasts. Not groping.... just resting. Feeling your heartbeat through your ribs.

"Fast," he notes. His thumb strokes the valley between your breasts and you shiver. "Slow down. You're rushing."

You do as he asked, your hands sliding over your skin with less urgency and more intention. Bobby's hand follows, learning new terrain, the dip of your waist and the flare of your hip and the soft give of your stomach where you've always been self-conscious and he presses his palm there like he's making a point.

Like that spot, specifically, is worth his hand.

Then his mouth replaces his palm.

He starts at your throat. A kiss. Open-mouthed, warm, the press of his lips and the faintest edge of teeth. Then your collarbone. The notch at the base of your throat where your pulse is hammering. Down. The flat of his tongue dragging along your sternum, tasting the thin sheen of sweat that the California morning and your own nerves have produced.

His mouth is unhurried. Exploratory. He's not kissing you so much as he's mapping you with his lips, charting the terrain the way he'd scout a location before a shoot. Finding the light, finding the angles, finding what works on you.

His mouth finds your breast. Kisses the swell of it. The underside, where the skin is softest. And then his lips close around your nipple and he sucks—not hard, not gentle, somewhere in between, a warm wet pressure that sends a bolt of sensation from your breast directly to your cunt and your back arches off the mattress.

"Oh."

Bobby hums against you. A sound of satisfaction. His tongue circles your nipple, flattens, flicks.

His free hand slides up your ribs and cups your other breast, thumb rolling across the peak, and the dual sensation—mouth and hand, wet and dry—makes you reach for him. Your fingers find his hair. Sandy strands, still slightly damp from the shower, thick between your fingers. You grip. Pull.

Just... needing something to hold onto while his mouth does this to you.

The pull makes Bobby groan. The sound vibrates through your nipple and into your chest and your hips lift off the bed involuntarily, pressing into nothing.

He feels it and his mouth tightens. Pulls harder. His teeth graze the sensitive peak and your fingers clench in his hair and you tug, genuinely tug, trying to pull him up, pull him to your mouth, because you need to kiss him, you need—

He doesn't let go.

His mouth stays locked on your nipple, sucking with a focused intensity that borders on stubborn, and you're pulling his hair and he's groaning and he will not come up, will not release, and the wet heat of his mouth is making you clench around nothing.

Your thighs press together, your hips rocking against air, seeking fullness, friction, anything, and Bobby—Bobby, who is supposed to be a professional, who is supposedly in control of this situation—reaches down with his free hand and cups you between the legs.

Just cups you. His whole palm, warm, pressed against the soaked cotton of your underwear. Just holding the heat of you in his hand while his mouth works your nipple and your fingers twist in his hair and the sound that comes out of you is breathy and too high.

"Bobby—please, I need—"

He releases your nipple with a wet pop that you feel in your spine. Glances up at you, his lips swollen. His eyes heavy-lidded and dark and his hand still cupping you, pressing against the damp fabric, feeling the heat seep through.

"Need what, baby?" Low. Rough. His fingers flex against you, palm grinding just slightly against your pulsing core, one small movement of pressure through the cotton. "Tell me."

"Touch me," you plead, trying to press closer. "Actually touch me."

His fingers slide under the elastic. Find you bare. Find you soaked. And the sound he makes—a sharp exhale through his nose, almost a hiss—is the sound of a man who knew what he was going to find but is still wrecked by the reality of it.

"Jesus." Barely a whisper. His fingers parting your folds. Not penetrating yet, just circling your clit. Just petting. Long, feather-light strokes through the slick of you, up and down, spreading the wetness with an aching patience that makes your hips chase his hand. "So wet, baby. This all from—was this from my mouth? From me sucking on you?"

You nod. You can't speak. His fingers are petting you like he's got all the time in the world and no intention of giving you what you need. Long strokes. Root to tip. Parting you with two fingers and letting the middle one drag between, barely touching your clit, just enough to make your thighs shake.

"Pretty little pussy," he murmurs, and the words shouldn't work.

They're filthy and crude and you've heard variations in the tapes you've watched that made you cringe, but Bobby says them the way he said "you're pretty" in the diner. Like a fact. Something he can't help observing. Like your body laid out in morning light is a view he needs to narrate. His fingers keep petting. Lazy. Wet with you, making you drip onto his grandmother's quilt.

Then his mouth starts traveling south.

He kisses down your stomach. Your hip bone. The crease of your thigh. Hooks his fingers into your underwear, drags them down, tosses them off the bed without looking. Parts your thighs with both hands, spreading you open, and the sound he makes—not a groan this time, something lower, something guttural, a sound that vibrates in his chest—is not for the camera.

You know this because the camera is on the nightstand and he hasn't touched it and he's not angling for a shot. He's just peering down at you. Spread open in the morning light. And that sound is coming out of him because he can't stop it.

"Fuck," he whispers, his thumbs pressing into the crease of your thighs. "Okay. Okay."

He lowers his mouth to you.

Bobby eats you out the way he kissed you earlier. Unhurried, thorough. Long strokes of his tongue that start at your entrance and drag upward, tasting the length of you, and you feel his groan against your cunt when the flavour hits and your whole body shudders.

He circles your clit with a pressure that's devastating in its patience. He's not trying to make you come fast. He's tasting. Exploring. Learning what makes your hips jerk and what makes you gasp and what makes your fingers find his hair again.

You fist both hands in those sandy strands and pull and the sound he makes—rough, grateful, hungry—vibrates against your clit. Your hips buck and his hands tighten on your thighs. Holding them apart, his thumbs stroking the soft skin in counterpoint to the filthy things his tongue is doing.

He's found a rhythm now. Flat, wide strokes punctuated by the pointed tip of his tongue flicking your clit in a pattern that your hips start chasing, lifting off the bed, grinding against his mouth, and he lets you. Lets you ride his face with his hands gripping your thighs and his eyes closed and his entire world narrowed to the taste and the sound and the wet.

"Bobby—oh my god—"

"Mm." Against you. His mouth full of you. His tongue pressing flat, licking you open in a broad swipe that makes your vision swim. "Taste incredible. Could stay here all fuckin' day."

He could. You believe him. He looks like he means it. Settled between your thighs like he's found the only place in the world he wants to be.

You tug his hair again and his moan is muffled against your cunt and you feel it everywhere, the vibration traveling through your pelvis and up your spine, and you pull harder and his tongue presses harder and the feedback loop is building. Your hands in his hair and his mouth on you and the wet sounds and the moans and you're close, you're getting close—

He pulls back with a wet, slick sound.

You whimper. The loss of his mouth leaving you throbbing, aching, empty.

"Not yet." His chin is wet, his lips swollen. Bobby's eyes are glazed and dark, the professional gone, replaced by something feral that's been living underneath the cool-boy surface and is now looking at you like it's deciding whether to devour you. "Not yet, baby. Want to be inside you when you come. Wanna feel you, yeah?"

You moan in response, dizzy. And your moans are real. That's the thing that's changing the temperature of the room.

You're not playing them up, not pitching them for any microphone, not performing the breathy exaggerated sounds you've heard in the tapes you've watched out of curiosity and mild horror. You're just reacting. And it's affecting him. His breathing has changed. His hips are pressing into the mattress in a grind he can't seem to control and you realise he's hard.

He's been hard for a while. He's been eating you out with his cock straining against his jeans and he hasn't touched himself once.

Bobby sits back on his heels. Pulls the t-shirt over his head in one motion. His chest is flushed. Lean, not bulky, the body of someone who lifts camera equipment for a living and forgets to eat regularly. The belt buckle. The zipper. The happy trail of hair dipping dangerously beneath the belt buckle. He pushes the jeans down and kicks them off and he's—

your mouth goes dry.

Bobby Franklin naked is a problem. Bobby Franklin hard is a crisis.

He sees you looking. The smirk returns. That lazy, insufferable lift of one corner of his mouth. "See something you like?"

"Shut up."

You sit up. Grab his hips. Pull him toward you and the surprise on his face—genuine, unperformed, the mask cracking again—is worth everything.

He stumbles forward on the mattress, knees sinking into the sheets, and your hands are on his stomach, his ribs, dragging your nails lightly down his sides and he hisses. His cock twitches and you feel powerful in a way that has nothing to do with cameras or money.

"How do you want me to fuck you?" His voice is gravel. Wrecked. He's peering down at you with his hands cupping your face, thumbs on your cheekbones, and the professionalism is a memory. "Tell me."

"From behind." No hesitation. The words tumbling out before your brain can edit them. "I want—on my stomach, I want you behind me, I want—"

Bobby's eyes go wide. His whole face flushes harder. Cheeks, ears, the V of his throat. He drops his head against your shoulder and laughs. A real laugh. Rough and bitten-off and disbelieving.

"Shit, baby." Muffled against your skin. "Can't say stuff like that to me. Can't just—" He lifts his head. The flush is gorgeous on him, spreading down his neck. "Yeah. Fuck yeah. Turn over."

He flips you. Firm and purposeful. His hands on your hips guiding you onto your stomach, lifting your hips until your ass is raised and your face is in the pillow and you feel exposed in a way that's terrifying and thrilling.

"Look at you." His hands on your hips, sliding up. Over the curve of your ass. Both palms cupping you, squeezing, spreading, his thumbs tracing the cleft while he breathes hard through his nose. "Every angle. Every fuckin' angle. 'S not fair."

His hand draws back. Comes down on your ass. Not a slap, not quite, a firm pat that's more proprietary than punishing and the sound it makes in the quiet bedroom is obscene. Your hips jolt. He does it again. Lighter. Smoothing his palm over the spot after, kneading with a hum.

"Could cover you like this," he mutters, stroking the curve of your ass with both hands, spreading you again, looking at you from behind with an expression you can feel even though you can't see it. "Just—stay right here. Just like this. Prettiest goddamn thing I've ever shot and I haven't even started the camera yet."

He reaches for the handheld. Turns it on. Red light. Frames the shot—you on your stomach, your hips raised, the curve of your spine. His hand still on your ass. Claiming. Warm.

He sets the camera on the mattress, angled up. Reaches for himself. You hear it. The wet sound of him spitting into his palm, the slick stroke of his fist over his cock, and then he's behind you. The hot thick length of him pressed against you, nestled between your folds, and he groans and you groan, and he doesn't push in.

He rolls against you.

Long, grinding strokes, his cock sliding through the slick mess of you, dragging across your clit with every thrust. The head catching at your entrance and pulling away. Over and over. Using the length of himself to stroke you, to tease you, to coat himself in you until the sound of skin on wet skin fills the room and your fingers are clawing at the sheets.

"Feel that?" His chest pressed against your back. His mouth against your ear. "Feel how hard you got me? Been like this since the diner. Since you sat down in that booth and looked at me with those fuckin' eyes. Thought about this. Thought about what you'd feel like."

His hips roll. The head of his cock catches your entrance again, presses, almost, almost—

"Bobby, please—"

His cock throbs against your core. "Tell me."

"Fuck me. Please." You suck in a shaky breath. "I need you to—"

He spits again. You feel it, warm, landing where his cock meets your cunt. His hand stroking himself once, twice, spreading the slick. And then he notches himself at your entrance and pushes in.

One long stroke. All the way. Your body opening around him and his groan matching yours. Colliding, two raw sounds meeting in the air and becoming something bigger than either. He bottoms out and holds you in place, and you feel every inch of him, the stretch, the heat, the fullness, his forehead dropping against the nape of your neck and he breathes "oh fuck" against your hair and his whole body shakes.

"God—you feel—" He can't finish. His hips twitch, involuntary, the tiniest thrust that pulls a gasp from both of you. "Baby. Baby, you feel—"

He starts moving. And the control lasts about thirty seconds.

Thirty seconds of measured strokes. Finding the angle. Professional. Thinking about the shot, the camera on the mattress, the red light.

And then you push back against him with a greedy sound, meet his thrust with your hips, grinding onto him, taking him deeper, and you moan. Really moan, the sound that's been building since he put his mouth on your nipple and refused to let go, and something in Bobby snaps.

His hand grabs your hip. His other hand braces on the mattress beside your head. And he fucks you.

Not the controlled version. The real version. The Bobby Franklin that exists underneath the smirk and the camera and the professional detachment. Hips driving into you with a force that shoves you into the mattress, that punches the air from your lungs, that turns your vision white around the edges. Sweat beading on his chest and dripping onto your spine. His breathing ragged, broken, gasping against the back of your neck in hot bursts.

And you're both gasping, coiling, pushing into each other blindly. Your hand reaches back, finds his hip, his thigh, pulling him deeper, harder, your fingers digging into the muscle and he groans like you've wounded him.

His hand finds yours, laces your fingers together beside your head, pressing your joined hands into the sheets, and the intimacy of it cracks something deep in both of you.

"So good," he's babbling against your spine. His mouth open, dragging wet kisses between your shoulder blades. "So fuckin' good, squeezing me so tight—can you hear that? Hear how wet you are? Hear what you're doin' to me?"

You can hear it. The obscene wet sound of his cock driving into you, the slap of his hips against your ass, the creak of the bed frame that he's going to have to explain to the furniture store below.

"Bobby—" Your voice is gone. Shattered, croaking. "Bobby, I'm gonna—I can't—"

"Yeah you can." Growled against your ear. His teeth grazing your earlobe. Biting down. "Cum for me. Wanna feel it. Wanna feel you squeeze my cock so tight I can't fuckin' think—"

He lets go of your hand. His fingers fist in your hair. Gathering the hair, wrapping the strands around his fingers. And he lifts your head from the pillow, arching your neck back, turning your face toward the camera on the mattress that's still rolling, red light blinking, catching everything.

"Show them," he murmurs against the shell of your ear. "Let 'em see how pretty you look when you cum for me."

You fall apart.

The orgasm rips through you. An earthquake, seismic and structural that starts where he's buried inside you and radiates outward.

Your mouth opens on a moan that you don't recognise as your own voice, wanton, cracked, genuine. There's no performance, no production, it's pulled from somewhere primal and raw inside you. And Bobby feels it. Feels the clench and the shake and the sound and his rhythm breaks, shatters, his hips slamming into you without finesse, chasing his own end through the aftershocks of yours.

He comes with a loud, greedy moan, a gruff sound of laughter caught in his throat. This breathless, incredulous sound, muffled against the back of your damp neck, like he can't believe what just happened to him. His hips jerk again, pressed flush against your ass. His hand loosens in your hair, fingertips grazing your scalp.

His body shudders against yours in waves that slow and gentle and eventually still.

His lips find the shell of your ear. Warm. Spent. Still inside you.

"With a moan like that," he rasps, kissing the curve of your ear, "and a pussy that grips me that tight?" He laughs against your skin. Loose. Golden. The real laugh, the unfiltered one. "Shit, baby, you're gonna be famous."

You laugh too. Into the pillow. The sound surprising you. The lightness of it, the ease. The fact that you can laugh, right now, naked and sweating and thoroughly ruined in a stranger's bed with two cameras rolling.

You're laughing because he's funny and because the sex was extraordinary and because you came to this apartment expecting something transactional and clinical.

Instead you got Bobby Franklin's mouth telling you you're pretty like he couldn't help it and Bobby Franklin's hands holding yours while he fucked you and Bobby Franklin laughing against your neck like making you come was the best thing that happened to him all week.

He pulls out, slowly, carefully, making you shiver at the loss, and collapses next to you. Reaches over and clicks off the handheld. The red light dies. The static camera in the corner is still running and neither of you moves to turn it off.

Bobby lies on his back, chest rising and falling. Staring at the ceiling with the expression of a man whose professional boundaries have just been comprehensively violated by his own want.

"So," he says to the ceiling. "Same time next week?"

You turn your head on the pillow. He turns his. Pale eyes. Flushed face. Hair wrecked. That almost-smile.

"Same time next week," you agree, still breathless.

The static camera runs for another four minutes before Bobby remembers to turn it off.

In the footage—which he will watch later, alone, ostensibly for editing purposes—you can see two people lying side by side on white sheets, not touching, not talking, just breathing, and at the 2:47 mark the girl in the yellow sundress starts laughing again and the boy with the camera reaches over and takes her hand and doesn't let go until the tape runs out.

He doesn't use that part in the final cut.

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.

His usually wild hair was a mess, matted in places as if he'd been running his hands through it repeatedly. His leather jacket was askew, one sleeve pushed up to the elbow while the other hung loosely at his wrist. The strong scent of whiskey wafted from him, mixed with something earthier – had he been in the woods?

His eyes, usually sharp and alert, were unfocused as they landed on you. For a moment, they seemed to look through you rather than at you.

"Work?" he scoffed, stumbling slightly as he entered. "It's summer, kid. Live a little."

The irony of his statement, given his current condition, wasn't lost on you. But as he brushed past, the scent of alcohol growing stronger, you couldn't help but wonder what had driven him to drink so heavily tonight. Logan had his demons, sure, but this seemed excessive even for him.

"Logan," you said softly, reaching out to steady him as he swayed. "What happened? Are you okay?"

He paused, turning to look at you. For a brief moment, his tough exterior seemed to crack, revealing a glimpse of raw pain underneath. But as quickly as it appeared, it was gone, replaced by his usual gruff demeanor.

"I'm fine," Logan grunted, his voice rough as gravel. He shrugged off your hand with a forceful jerk that nearly threw him off balance. "Just need to sleep it off."

As he stumbled towards the stairs, you stood frozen in the foyer, a war of emotions raging within you. Frustration at the interruption of your work battled with genuine concern for your colleague. The sound of his heavy footsteps echoed through the hallway, each thud against the hardwood punctuated by a slight scuff - clear signs of his unsteady gait.

BAM

The sound reverberated through your chest, jolting you into action. "Oh my- Logan!" The twisting knot in your stomach unraveled, replaced by a surge of adrenaline as you found yourself on your knees beside the fallen giant. The polished wood floor was cool against your skin, a stark contrast to the heat radiating from Logan's body.

"Are you okay?!" Your voice came out higher than intended, tinged with worry. You gently turned his body, your hands careful but insistent. Logan's face came into view, his rugged features slack, eyes roving aimlessly. They passed over your face without a flicker of recognition, unfocused and glassy.

"Clearly not," you muttered, answering your own question. The words tasted bitter on your tongue, worry and frustration mingling in equal measure. You patted his stubbled cheek, the coarse hair rough against your fingers. The familiar texture grounded you, a tactile reminder of the man beneath this drunken exterior.

"Come on, you big lug." Your fingers curled around his jacket collar, the worn leather an old friend under your grip. You could smell the years of use on it – a mixture of tobacco, whiskey, and that indescribable scent that was purely Logan. You tugged, your muscles straining against his dead weight. It was like trying to move a mountain, and you felt a bead of sweat trickle down your back with the effort. "I can't get you up those stairs, but we can try to find something else."

Logan stirred under your hands, a low groan rumbling from deep in his chest. You could feel the vibration of it through your palms, like the purr of some great, dangerous cat. Keeping a steadying hand on his arm, you helped as he struggled to his feet. His muscles were taut under your touch, coiled with a strength that, even in his inebriated state, was intimidating.

The scent of whiskey hung heavy in the air around you both, an almost visible miasma. It mingled with the earthy smell of his leather jacket and something so distinctly Logan – a heady mix of cigar smoke and pine that usually brought a sense of comfort and safety. Now, it just emphasized the bitter truth that in trying to distance himself from his pain, Logan had simultaneously distanced himself from the man you once knew.

He was mumbling, disconnected words tumbling from his lips like scattered puzzle pieces. You caught fragments – "Jean" and "Summers" among them – each name landing like a small stone in the pit of your stomach. But you weren't really trying to piece it together, not now. Your mind was already racing ahead, calculating the logistics of moving him, wondering if you could manage to get him to the nearby study with its comfortable couch. And, if you were being honest with yourself, a small part of you was wondering how soon you could get him out of your sight and return to the normalcy of your work.

You watched, as if in slow motion, as Logan threw a heavy arm around you. The sudden shift in weight knocked you off balance, causing your body to shove even closer to Logan's as you struggled to support his swaying form.

You closed your eyes, trying to distract itself with thoughts of your discarded project in the library. You tried to reimagine your pre-arranged photos and timelines, hearing them calling to you like a siren song of productivity and purpose. But it was hard to focus on that, not with the heat radiating off of Logan's body making your skin feel like it was sizzling, every point of contact between you a livewire of sensation.

You could feel every hard plane of his body pressed against you, the heat of him searing through your clothes. The closeness was both thrilling and terrifying, and you quickly shook your head, pushing the confusing thoughts away. Right now, Logan needed a friend, whether he (or you) realized it or not.

"Alright, big guy," you said, your voice sounding strained even to your own ears as you adjusted your grip on his arm. Your fingers dug into the solid muscle there, seeking purchase. "Let's get you somewhere you can lay down before you fall again and cause some damage." You began to guide him, every step a careful negotiation between his unsteady feet and your determined support. It was like trying to direct a landslide – Logan's bulk and uncoordinated movements making each step a precarious balancing act.

"I-I'm fine," he slurred, his words thick and syrupy. His head bobbed with each trudging step, reminding you of those drinking bird toys. "Jus' needed a break." The words were punctuated by a hiccup that shook his whole frame, and by extension, yours.

"A break from what?" You grunted, the words coming out breathless as you strained to keep him walking in something resembling a straight line. The carpet runner in the hallway bunched under your feet with each step, creating small obstacles you had to navigate around. "It's the last week of summer."

The reminder seemed to hit Logan like a physical blow. He let out a loud groan, the sound rumbling through his chest and into yours where you were pressed against him. Suddenly, his body went limp, all semblance of cooperation vanishing in an instant. He stumbled again, but this time, anchored to you as he was, he dragged you with him.

"No, no Logan," you gasped, your muscles screaming as you struggled to keep both of you upright. Your feet scrambled for purchase on the polished wood floor, sliding dangerously. For a heart-stopping moment, you thought you were both going down, but somehow – through sheer determination or dumb luck – you managed to keep moving.

With a final, herculean effort, you maneuvered Logan's bulk towards the library. The giant sofa loomed before you like an oasis in a desert, promising relief from your burden. And of course, because the universe seemed to have a twisted sense of humor tonight, it was right next to your craft table. The carefully arranged materials – your planned escape from this chaos – now stood as silent witnesses to your struggle.

As you finally deposited Logan onto the couch, the leather creaking under his weight, you couldn't help but wonder how this night had spiraled so far from your quiet plans. The Logan-shaped imprint of heat on your body slowly began to fade, leaving you feeling oddly bereft despite your earlier desire to be free of him. You stood there, catching your breath, watching the rise and fall of Logan's chest as he settled into the couch, already half-asleep.

As you finally deposited Logan onto the couch, the aged leather creaked in protest under his substantial weight. You couldn't help but marvel at how drastically this night had veered from your meticulously laid plans. The Logan-shaped imprint of heat on your body slowly began to fade, leaving behind a peculiar sense of absence. It was a feeling that caught you off guard, considering your earlier desperation to be free of his burdensome presence.

For a moment, you stood there, your chest heaving as you caught your breath. Your eyes traced the rise and fall of Logan's broad chest as he settled into the couch, his features already softening with the onset of sleep. The furrows in his brow, usually so pronounced, began to smooth out, giving him an almost peaceful appearance that seemed at odds with the tumultuous events of the night.

Shaking your head, you turned back to your project, eager to lose yourself in the familiar comfort of organization and creativity. Each piece fell into place with a satisfying click, the world narrowing down to the careful arrangement of photos and timelines. Time seemed to slip away as you worked, the rhythmic sound of Logan's breathing fading into white noise.

Despite the rhythmic process you had created, your mind managed to stray to the man beside you. Logan's presence, even in his unconscious state, was impossible to ignore. Your eyes drifted from your work to his sleeping form, tracing the rugged lines of his face that you'd memorized long ago.

A familiar ache bloomed in your chest, a bittersweet mixture of longing and resignation. How many days and nights had you spent like this, stealing glances at Logan when he wasn't aware, allowing yourself to imagine a reality where his eyes would light up at the sight of you? But that was a fantasy, and you knew it.

Your fingers absently toyed with a photo of Jean Grey that had fallen from your timeline. Even in this candid shot, her beauty was undeniable. Logan's voice, slurred with alcohol, echoed in your mind: "Jean." Of course, it always came back to Jean.

You couldn't blame him, not really. Jean was everything - brilliant, powerful, compassionate. And you? You were just... you. The history teacher who helped patch him up after missions, who listened to his rare moments of vulnerability, who silently loved him from afar.

A soft murmur from the couch drew your attention. Logan's face had contorted, his lips moving soundlessly. Was he dreaming of her even now? The thought sent a pang through your heart.

"She's with Scott, Logan." You shook your head.

The words tasted bitter on your tongue. Because that was the cruel irony, wasn't it? Jean was utterly devoted to Scott Summers. Her love for him was as clear as day to everyone - everyone except Logan. He clung to hope like a drowning man to driftwood, blind to the fact that Jean's heart belonged to another. Just as he was blind to your feelings for him.

You turned back to your work, trying to lose yourself once more in the familiar task. But your eyes kept drifting to the leather jacket draped over a nearby chair - Logan's jacket. How many times had you imagined him placing it around your shoulders on a cold night? How many times had you dreamed of being the one he looked at with that intensity, that raw need?

But those were just dreams. Reality was this: Logan, passed out on the couch beside you, murmuring another woman's name in his sleep. A woman who would never return his feelings. And you, silently loving a man who would never see you as anything more than a friend.

The spell was abruptly broken by a loud, guttural grunt from the couch. Startled, you whirled around, your heart leaping into your throat. Logan's peaceful demeanor had vanished, replaced by a mask of distress. His forehead was creased, beads of sweat forming at his hairline. His hands twitched at his sides, fingers curling as if grasping for something just out of reach.

The realization hit you like a splash of cold water: he was having a nightmare.

Pushing your chair into the table with a soft scrape, you rose to your feet. Your movements were slow, deliberate, as you approached Logan. Years of living in a school full of mutants with varying degrees of control had taught you the value of caution, especially when dealing with someone as potentially dangerous as Logan in a vulnerable state.

You positioned yourself at the head of the couch, carefully staying out of range of his arms - and more importantly, his claws. Your eyes flicked nervously to his hands, half-expecting to see the glint of adamantium at any moment. Swallowing hard, you steeled yourself and reached out, your hand hovering uncertain over his forehead.

For a heartbeat, you hesitated. The man before you was a far cry from the intimidating, gruff Logan you knew. In sleep, trapped in the throes of a nightmare, he looked almost... vulnerable. It was a side of him you'd never seen, never even imagined existed.

Taking a deep breath, you gently placed your fingertips on his temple. The skin there was hot to the touch, almost feverish. You could feel the rapid pulse of his temporal artery beneath your fingers, a testament to the intensity of whatever visions were plaguing him.

"Logan," you whispered, your voice barely audible even in the quiet of the library. "It's okay. You're safe." He let out a soft moan. Your fingers comb through his unruly hair, something you had never dared to do before. His usual gruffness is stripped away, and what remains is raw, untethered vulnerability—both his and yours.

His breath is uneven as he shifts under your touch, but your movements remain steady, soothing him. The weight of unspoken feelings that have built up over the years presses down on you. The sight of Logan up close so troubled and lost pulls at your heartstrings in a way you can’t ignore anymore.

"Logan," you whisper again, this time more firmly, urging him back to reality. His eyes flutter open, hazy and disoriented. For a moment, they lock onto yours. There's no Jean, no Scott, no X-Men—just the two of you in this quiet, dimly lit room, the air thick with unspoken tension.

His hand moves up to catch yours as it rests on his hair, his grip surprisingly gentle despite the strength behind it. "Why... why are you here?" he mumbles, voice still hoarse and thick with sleep, but there’s something else beneath the surface.

"I'm here because you needed me," you reply softly, the words feeling far too loaded but still true. The tension in his grip tightens, and for a split second, you wonder if you're imagining the way his eyes darken, the hint of desperation and something else swirling within them.

"Don't you have someone else to take care of? I'm not worth the trouble..." His words are a mixture of bitterness and regret, and it cuts deep. You shake your head slowly, heart pounding in your chest.

"You are worth it, Logan," you whisper, barely able to believe the words have left your mouth. Maybe it’s the weight of the years you’ve spent suppressing your feelings, or the heavy air filled with alcohol and desperation, but something shifts between you two in that moment.

Without thinking, Logan sits up, his grip on you tightening as he pulls you closer to sit beside him, bodies pressed together. The sudden movement leaves you breathless, your body leaning against his, faces only inches apart. His breath is warm and carries the sharp, smoky scent of whiskey, but beneath it lingers something else—something raw, unspoken, and heavy between you. The proximity feels electric, the tension between you simmering just beneath the surface.

For a split second, neither of you moves. You can feel the thrum of Logan’s pulse where his chest presses against yours, and his eyes, dark and stormy, search your face for something—maybe reassurance, maybe an answer to a question neither of you has dared to ask aloud. The weight of unrequited love hangs between you, an invisible thread that pulls you closer even as you hesitate. You've both been running from this, denying it, but now it feels inevitable.

Logan's hand lingers on your arm, his rough fingers brushing against your skin in a way that sends shivers down your spine. His jaw clenches, and you can see the battle raging inside him, the unspoken words on his lips threatening to spill out. "I—" he starts, his voice rough and hesitant, like he's about to confess something too heavy to bear, but you don’t let him finish. You can't, not when you're both teetering on this razor's edge.

You lean in and kiss him, your lips meeting his in a soft, tentative press. For a heartbeat, Logan freezes, his body going rigid with surprise, but then something in him snaps. His right hand snakes down your left side pulling you even closer, as his other hand cups the back of your neck, and he pulls you deeper into the kiss, his lips urgent, almost desperate. It's not gentle—it’s raw, filled with the intensity of everything he's never said. The kiss is a release of all the years spent pining for someone else, all the nights spent wishing for what he could never have.

You know this isn’t love, not the kind either of you have been hoping for. It’s about filling the hollow space left by the people who’ll never look at you the way you want them to. You’re both seeking something that’s just out of reach, using each other to drown out the ache of unrequited love that’s settled deep in your bones. Jean's name might as well be carved into the air between you, but tonight, that pain is dulled, replaced by the heat and urgency of the moment.

His grip on you tightens as the kiss deepens, a silent understanding passing between you. This isn’t about forever. It’s about right now—two people grasping for something real, even if it’s fleeting, even if it doesn’t fill the spaces you need it to. You know that come morning, things will be different, but for now, you both allow yourselves this escape.

Logan’s tongue licks tentatively at your lips, you give him the permission he’s silently seeking as your lips part. You feel lightheaded as his tongue slides into your mouth, and your groin feels hot as Logan lets out the filthiest groan into your mouth.

You let out a soft whine as you grab at his shirt, his muscles hot and firm under the fabric. As Logan continues to indulge in the taste of you, fingers trail down the front of his shirt all the way to and under the hem. Your fingers lightly drag across the thin sliver of skin and you feel Logan’s hip twitch, and he pulls away sighing lightly into your mouth.

He adorned the sexiest look on his smug face. Granted he still looked inebriated but this time instead of being drunk on whiskey.. he was drunk on you. Mother of all that is good and well, you know you should say something, be reasonable, smart, but dammit if there’s one thing you will stick by it’s that you will always help a friend in need…

You bring him close, hands clasping behind his neck and pulling him in as you swing your leg over his lap straddling him. His hands immediately meet the small of your back, and he leans in to kiss you again pulling you flush to his chest.

Now its your turn to take control in the kiss, Logan pliant as you lap at his mouth. He lets you think your in charge until he takes you by surprise and uses one hand to grab the hair at the back of your head. You lose your rhythm for a second and he takes the opportunity to push his tongue along yours, saliva pooling in your mouths and melting in the middle. He begins to suck on the slick pink muscle and you give in.

Whatever ounce of worry, hesitation, anxiety, any reservation whatsoever you could have had left your body and you gave in to desire. That bitch, that deliciously sinful demon had got her way as the muscles in your legs gave in and you relax onto Logans lap. He continues to slurp at your mouth, and you mewl. Never in your life had anyone done this to you before. Not only was it filthy, it was incredibly hot.

The heat in your groin burned your insides leaving you with an ache you needed to relieve. Your hips buck reflexively as you feel a wetness pool on the fabric of your underwear. You let a moan slip out of your mouth, and Logan let out a deep and throaty chuckle. His fingers go back beneath the waistline of your pants, fingers gripping the flesh of your hips and grinding you down against his pelvis.

You threw your head into the crook of Logan’s neck as he began to buck his hips into yours at a steady rhythm. His fingers digging harder into your skin, as he applied more pressure. You could feel the thin fabrics of your underwear and sleep shorts soak the more you rubbed against Logan. You began to gyrate your hips in tighter circles.

“Ah, fuck.” You breathed out as you pressed your forehead to the brute of a man beneath you. “Logan, Logan, come on, stop teasing.” You panted between breaths. Logan shifted a bit beneath you causing your neglected clit to get caught during your motions. Your head lolled to the side and then back as a whimper turned into a full cry of frustration. God, you wanted this pain, this ache you were feeling to go away and you’d do anything to make it stop.

Logan’s grip tightened on your hips, as he stilled your body for a second.

“What the fuck,” You hissed, trying to slide your wet heat on Logans definite show-er and grower but the man loved to tease. Logan continued to hold your hips and you began to grow frustrated. The feeling of his smirk against your neck causing tears to come to your eyes.

“Logan, please.” You whimpered, your voice shaking. You feel him freeze and you mentally shoot yourself in the foot— You didn’t want this to be a thing with emotions, it was bad enough that the first time you’re having sex with the man you’ve loved for five years is as a one night fling. You didn’t want to have to think about the emotional repercussions before having what you’re pretty sure is going to be the best orgasm of your life.

In a moment of panic, and wanting to shift the focus you lean forward, and your hands find the button of Logan’s pants. You unbuckle the belt, and he peppers kisses along your shoulders, your fingers fumble with the button, and he noses your jaw, you slide down the zipper and he pecks your neck. All of a sudden the intimacy becomes too much so you trail your hands at the band of his underwear and you begin to pull the fabric down. Coarse hair grazes your fingers, and before you can stop yourself your hand runs up his stomach, and down back to his groin— his breath shudders against the nape of your neck as he begins to nip at your skin.

Before you can fully expose the man he grabs your hand and puts it on his shoulder as if saying to let him do the work. You obey and lift your hips to give him space. Next thing you know your being guided back close to him, hovering over his groin.

While you hadn’t seen his dick fully yet, you knew the mutant was big. You could tell regardless of the scenario. The way he walks, the way he sits— legs spread so wide it’s like he’s constantly inviting you to kneel between them. Missing the opportunity this time didn’t make you think any different though, this man was massive. The heat within your body was already painful enough, but now the heat you feel outside your cunt was unbearable.

Your right hand slid between your bodies as you reached for Logan's thick dick. He let out a low growl as your fingers wrapped around his shaft. Logan's fingers reached for the fabric between your thighs, moving the soaked cloth to the side urging you to put his cock inside.

You guide the tip to your entrance and you can feel your cunt clench around nothing in anticipation. You feel heat rise to your cheeks in embarrassment, but the aggression in Logan’s breathing gives you relief that you’re not the only one desperate. But for who it was is a different story.

Logan got impatient and lifted his hips to push the tip past, and your mouth fell open as a silent moan possessed your body. God, you were right. He was so thick, the stretch was borderline unbearable but before you could fully adjust Logan began to thrust up even further. His dick going so deep, the tip hit the spongy part.

He let out a strangled grunt as he held your hips down, and you squirmed.

“You needa stop that.” He barked, as he rolled his head back against the couch rest, trying to control himself as he felt your hole clench around him.

“I’m sorry,” You sob, trying to adjust but the pain and pleasure were too overwhelming you could feel yourself losing focus.

“I just–” He shushes you by cradling you against his shoulder, arms enveloping you in a tight hug, and just when you think you’ve calmed down he devours you like you’re his last meal. He wraps his arms around you and lifts you from his lap before he brings you down and he thrusts up.

A sob escapes your lips as his hips fire off like a pistol, thrusting in and out, brutal but so worth it as your desires are finally being satiated. He’s holding onto you like if he let go you’d float away. A string of curses fill the air as he continues to pump into you.

“Fuck, fuck, Logan.” You mumble, words slowly leaving your mouth.

“Awe,” Logan tuts as his hips fall into a normal pace, his hand coming to caress the back of your hair. “Don’t tell me this pussy is lightweight, we’ve only just started and you’re already acting like this?” You don’t respond, and instead let out soft moans as he continues to fuck into your abused cunt. Logan uses the opportunity to pull you back by your hair (again) to examine your face. It’s flushed red, glowing with perspiration, your chest panting as you try to catch your breath.

“No baby that won’t do.” He caresses the hair out of your face and nuzzles his face against yours. His facial hair prickling your skin. He places a kiss on your forehead before he pounds into you faster, deeper than before. You can barely keep your eyes open and all the sounds that leave your lips are just pathetic little whimpers and sobs.

"M'close." He grunts and you can't help but agree. "You gonna come, sweetheart?" You can't find the words and nod, pliant like a ragdoll in his arms. He groans.

"C'mon. You can do better than that, can't ya? Tell me."

"Fuck yes," you pant, your voice barely audible between gasps. You writhe beneath him, desperate for something to anchor yourself to, but with his hands pinning your wrists, the only thing you manage to grab is the rough hair on his lower abdomen, the friction of it grounding you as much as the heat and slap of his body. "Please… don’t stop."

His grip tightens on your wrists, the pressure pushing you to the edge as he moves faster, his breath hot against your skin. Each thrust sends a jolt through your body, every nerve alight with anticipation and need.

"That's it," he growls, voice thick with control as he watches you fall apart beneath him. "Let go."

You can feel it building, the tension coiling in your core, and with one final snap of his hips, you shatter—your body arching, toes curling, a strangled cry escaping your lips. The world blurs, everything outside this moment fading as you hit your peak, wave after wave crashing over you.

But even through the haze, you feel him reaching his own release. His pace becomes erratic, his muscles tensing, and as he finally falls over the edge, his body tight against yours, he groans—a low, guttural sound—before the name slips out.

"Jean—"

The word cuts through the air like a knife, your euphoria draining in an instant, replaced by a sharp, hollow ache in your chest.

Your heart plummets, and the warmth of his body that moments ago felt so consuming now feels like ice against your skin. The name he whispered isn’t yours. It echoes in your head, louder than the pounding of your pulse, louder than the ragged breaths you're both still catching. You feel like you’ve been struck, yet somehow, you’re not surprised. You always knew this wasn’t really about you. But it doesn’t stop the ache spreading through your chest.

You close your eyes, swallowing the lump in your throat as the reality of it all comes crashing down. This was always going to hurt.

For a few seconds, neither of you moves. The weight of the moment lingers, heavy and unbearable. His body relaxes, but the guilt etched into his expression is unmistakable, and you can feel the shift in the air. The intimacy that just moments ago had been raw and consuming has evaporated, leaving behind only an awkward silence and a sense of regret so thick it’s suffocating.

You disentangle yourself from him slowly, the warmth of his skin now foreign, a reminder of what you never really had. You sit up, your body still trembling, trying to piece together your scattered thoughts. The room feels stifling now, every breath you take thick with the weight of everything left unsaid.

Logan’s eyes open, still clouded with the haze of pleasure, but they widen when he realizes what he’s done—what he’s said. Panic flashes across his face, but it’s too late. You’ve heard it, and you can’t unhear it.

“Shit…” he mutters under his breath, his hand reaching out as if to apologize, but you’re already pulling away, slipping out of his grasp like sand between his fingers.

“It’s fine,” you murmur, voice barely above a whisper, though the crack in it betrays you. You force yourself to keep moving, pulling your clothes back into place, each motion slow and deliberate, as if trying to hold yourself together with every button and clasp.

He doesn’t say anything, and for once, you’re grateful. You don’t want to hear an apology, you don’t want to hear him stumble over words of regret. You don’t want to hear him say her name again.

You stand up, back turned to him, your chest heaving not from passion, but from the pain you can’t quite swallow down. Your hands are shaking as you adjust your clothes, but you refuse to let him see it. You knew this was a mistake. You knew this wasn’t love.

“This was never meant to fix anything,” you finally say, your voice steadier than you feel. “I was just… trying to help.” The words taste bitter, but they’re true. You’d gotten caught up, you’d let yourself believe—if only for a moment—that maybe it could be more. But it never was.

Logan sits up, running a hand through his hair, looking at you with something that could almost be remorse. But it doesn’t matter anymore. He made his choice long before tonight.

With one last glance over your shoulder, you meet his gaze. His eyes are still shadowed by the weight of his unrequited love, and you can see it all too clearly now. You were never the one he needed. You never stood a chance.

“I’ll be fine,” you lie, turning back to the door, your footsteps heavy as you leave the room, abandoning the project you had started earlier that night, each step pulling you farther away from the moment that should’ve never happened.

But even as you walk away, you can’t shake the feeling that for a second, despite knowing better, you let yourself believe it was real.

———