jen

Your cactus - they don’t come in litters by the way, they’re not puppies. A cluster, maybe? Either way I like that it leans. Gives it character. Who needs a fully upright functional cactus when the leaning one still flowers?

One more thing. You don’t need to apologise for the emails. Maybe I shouldn’t have listened to all of them. I’m glad I did though. It was good hearing from you, even when you weren’t really writing to me.

Take care. Gator.

Re: (no subject)

From: [email protected] 

To: [email protected] 

Date: 24 Oct 2025

Hi Gator,

House of Pain, huh? I’ve had “Jump Around” stuck in my head for five days. I’m blaming you for that. Coincidentally, it is my go-to song choice at karaoke. I know all the words.

If you can find a good audio-described copy of 2001 - A Space Odyssey, you should watch it. Your roommate is right, it is a good movie.  I took my dog for a walk earlier, before it got dark, and there’s a huge tree trunk that washed up years ago that sort of looms on the shore like the obelisk in the movie.  I thought about it, then I thought of HAL, then I thought of your software. Was it hard to learn how to use it?  Does your accent give it any trouble? Mine does sometimes when I use voice commands in the car, I’ll be trying to get it to call someone and it decides I’ve asked it to find directions to somewhere random instead. That’s annoying.

So you live with two other guys, and you have a support worker. What’s that like? How do you spend your days? One thing I remember is that boredom doesn’t suit you - I hope Britt has a lot of patience if she has to deal with a bored Gator Tillman. God help the girl.

Re: (no subject)

From: [email protected] 

To: [email protected] 

Date: 26 Oct 2025

Karaoke. I didn’t have you down for karaoke. I’m going to need to know more about this at some point.

The obelisk thing - okay, that’s a good comparison. I’m adding 2001 to the list. Britt has a whole system for finding audio described stuff, she set it up on my laptop, so that’s not the problem it used to be. The accent thing - yes, constantly. The software and I have an ongoing disagreement about certain words. It keeps hearing “marsh” when I say “wash”, which makes no damn sense. Mikey thinks it’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened to anyone. He’s an ass.

What’s it like living here? It’s okay. It’s a lot, sometimes, living with other people, but it’s easier than the last time I did it. Britt is good at her job and doesn’t take any of our stuff personally, which you have to respect. Dom is anti-social, Mikey talks too much in the evenings, and Greg - one of the overnight support workers - once talked me through a whole situation at two in the morning and then made me go to the ER anyway, which I needed but was being stubborn about. The routine helps. I’ve got things I do during the week that I didn’t used to have, a group I go to, a kitchen session where I’m learning to cook properly, Joshua twice a week, and I meet Dot most weeks too. The routine fills the days. Some days that’s enough and some days it’s not, but most days lately it’s been enough.

Boredom isn’t really the problem. Turns out there’s a lot to keep you busy when you’re learning to do everything differently.

What’s your dog’s name?

Take care. Gator.

****************

He books the longer session himself, which he knows Joshua notes without commenting on out loud. Two hours instead of one, starting at two in the afternoon, which means he should be inside and occupied at home through the worst of the early evening when the streets start filling up.

Joshua had been expecting it. Gator could tell from the way he’d sounded on the phone - not surprised by it, just ready, the way of someone who has already cleared the time in their head before being officially asked.

They don’t talk about Halloween directly. That’s not how it works, not with Joshua, not with this particular thing. They talk around the edges of it - about control, about the difference between responsibility and punishment, about the work of learning to carry something without being flattened by it. Joshua asks questions that don’t announce themselves as questions. Gator answers them as honestly as he can, which is more honestly than he could have managed a few months ago, which he thinks feels like something.

At some point, maybe an hour in, Joshua says, you know she doesn’t blame you for it. Not anymore.

I know, Gator says.

Do you believe it?

He holds onto that for a little while. Noise from the street outside carries through the office window - a child’s voice, high and excited, followed by the shriek of someone who has been successfully scared.

I’m working on it, he says.

That’s enough, Joshua says. That’s exactly enough for today.

The session runs the full two hours. By the time he’s out on the street it’s past four and he can feel somehow that the light has gone and Stillwater has committed fully to Halloween - he hears passers-by talking about the carved pumpkins on porches, and the strings of orange lights in windows. A group of small children cross the road ahead of him with an adult he can hear but not see, the adult saying wait for me, wait for me in the tone of someone who has been saying that all afternoon.

He finds the bus stop. He waits.

On the bus he takes out his phone and puts an earbud - just one - in. He navigates to the email - her reply to his question, received two days ago and not yet answered because he’s been thinking about what to say, which is new, the thinking before the saying, something Joshua would comment on if he ever mentioned it.

HAL reads it back to him in its flat generic accent.

Flynn.

Just the one word. Her dog’s name, given to him freely, like it’s the most ordinary thing in the world to give someone like him something he asked for.

He thinks about it for the rest of the journey. The bus moves through Stillwater’s Halloween streets, the sounds of it coming through the windows - laughter and doors and the occasional distant firework - and he sits in the middle of it with his phone in his hand and her dog’s name in his head and something happening in his chest that isn’t anything to do with the heaviness of the date, that is in fact the opposite of it.

He’s still sitting with it when the woman across the aisle pats his shoulder and says, have a good Halloween, honey, and he realises his face has done that thing it does without his permission.

Thanks, he says. You too.

He gets off at his stop. He walks the half block to the house, his cane finding the familiar path, the smell of woodsmoke and something sweet from a neighbour’s porch, and he goes inside and upstairs and sits at his desk and pulls up the email app and starts talking.

“Hey. Flynn’s a good name. Tell me about him.”

****************

Re: (no subject)

From: [email protected] 

To: [email protected] 

Date: 06 Nov 2025

Flynn sounds like exactly the right kind of stubborn. Mikey has opinions about the name - he says it’s a good name for a dog who knows he’s good looking, which I think is a compliment to Flynn and an insult to everyone else simultaneously. That sort of talk is pretty typical for Mikey. What sort of dog is he? Is he a mutt, or a breed?

It snowed on Saturday. First proper snow of the year - I knew it was coming, the air had been doing something different for a few days, that kind of cold that means business. But I still wasn’t ready for it. I was on the bus when it started and I could hear it before I understood what I was hearing - the sound the wheels make on the road changes, the whole of the outside changes, and then someone near the front said “oh, it’s snowing”, and I just sat there and listened to it come down. I don’t know what I expected. I’ve been in snow before, obviously. But this was different somehow. Quieter than I expected. It settled.

Group on Tuesday was good. Leticia was late - her car wouldn’t start in the cold - so we just sat there for a while, the five of us, waiting. Marie said, “well, I’ll tell you what I heard on the way here”. And she did. She talked for about ten minutes - the sounds of her street in the morning, what the coffee place on the corner smelled like, the noise of the bus she takes. Nothing about what she might have seen though. I don’t know if she knows she does that. I didn’t say anything.

Michael in the cooking workshop has started teaching me to bake. Cookies, this week. The first batch went about as well as you’d imagine - Michael was very nice about it, which tells you everything. The second attempt was a little less burnt. I’m going in on Tuesday with the goal of producing something actually edible. I’ll report back.

Take care. Gator.

****************

The storms haven’t arrived yet. They’re coming - you can feel it in the air, the sort of heaviness that settles over the coast before the weather turns - but on this mid-November morning it’s still walkable, the beach is still accessible, the sea is doing something dramatic but not dangerous in the grey light.

Flynn runs ahead. You walk. The usual arrangement.

You’ve been thinking about what to write back to Gator’s last email. Not anxiously - that’s new, the not-anxious quality of it, the way the back-and-forth has settled into something that feels more like conversation than negotiation. You’d told him about Flynn’s name origin, and he’d come back with a whole thing involving his roommate Mikey and a movie marathon and a very strong opinion about naming conventions for animals that you’d found genuinely funny. You’d written back the same night and told him about the Therapet training process, how Flynn had come to you as a failed police dog, already partly trained, already himself, just needing the right context to be useful in.

He’d said, “that sounds like most people actually.”

You’d thought about that for two days.

Flynn doubles back, checks on you, accelerates away again toward the northern rocks. You watch him go and take your phone out of your jacket pocket and think about writing something, here, now. You look out at the ocean, the vast grey ahead, knowing that somewhere out there the winter storms are building up.

You put the phone away.

You think, “I’ll tell him about the storms when they come.”

You walk.

****************

Re: (no subject)

From: [email protected] 

To: [email protected] 

Date: 24 Nov 2025

Hi Gator,

Flynn says thank you for asking, the groomer was great. He’s doing well. He had a very important Sunday last week - we went on a Therapet visit to a care home along the coast, his regular placement. He has a favourite resident there - had, I should say. She died in September. Her name was Mrs Okafor and she was eighty-four and she used to call him Ọba mi, which is Yoruba for something like “my king” - it’s lucky he doesn’t speak Yoruba because that would have gone straight to his head. Her daughter told me at the funeral that she talked about Flynn every week, and that she’d thought he was something her mother had dreamed up. She’d been living with dementia, so sometimes the things she’d talk about had happened forty years ago, if they’d happened at all. But he’s very real and he’s asleep at my feet right now, dreaming about something, his legs going nuts. Whatever it is, it looks like hard work.

We spent most of the afternoon there. There’s a man who’s been living there since 2018, Walter. His son and grandkids moved to Arizona for work last year and the nurses in the care home said they could see him fading every day, like he’d given up. No one else comes to visit him - except for Flynn. Walter tosses a ball every so often for him, which Flynn brings back each time, and they sit together and Walter tells him stories. Sometimes I stay to listen, but I always feel a little like a spare part - the residents don’t really need me, it’s Flynn they look forward to seeing. He’s very good at his job. The nurses say Walter’s doing better now. I hope that continues. I’m going to bring him some magazines next week - he loved going fishing with his son, so I’ll try to find some angling magazines or something like that.

Thanksgiving this week. I’m spending it with my friends Esha and Kim - they’re a couple, they live about ten minutes from me, they’ve been here longer than I have and they’re the closest thing I have to family out here. We used to host a big dinner for everyone in the community who didn’t have anywhere to go, which was a lot of people when I first arrived. Three years on, most of those people have coupled up or moved away or found their people, so now it’s just the three of us with too much food and a very competitive game of Scrabble that Esha always wins. I don’t mind. It’s warm and it’s ours and that’s enough.

What are your plans?

Re: (no subject)

From: [email protected] 

To: [email protected] 

Date: 01 Dec 2025

Sorry for the slow reply.

I spent Thanksgiving with Dot and her family. Dot is - she’s complicated to explain. She was my stepmom for a little while, before Karen, but when I think about it, she didn’t ever really feel like a stepmom. She’s only a couple of years older than me so that might be part of it. The truth of it all is pretty bleak. Anyway.

She’s been - she's important. That’s the clearest way I can put it. She got me out, which is a long story, and now we have coffee most weeks and she picks me up from Joshua sometimes and on Thursday she made me sit at her table with her family and pass the cranberry sauce and pretend I knew what I was doing, which I didn’t, but I figured it out. We never really did Thanksgiving properly, in Lehigh.

Her husband Wayne cooked. He has opinions about stuffing. Strong ones. I’m not going to weigh in on the stuffing debate because I’ve only been out of jail since May and I don’t have enough data yet, but I’ll say this - it was good. Dot’s daughter Scotty was there too. She’s sixteen and she doesn’t miss much. She’s a good kid. It was - it was okay. More than okay, some of it. I didn’t know what to do with most of it, if I’m honest. It’s been a long time since I was at something like that.

Your Mrs Okafor - I’m sorry. She sounds like she was something. Sounds like she had good taste in dogs, and people. Walter likes fishing? He’ll like the magazines. That’s a nice thing you’re doing for him. I don’t think you’re as peripheral to Flynn’s job as you think you are.

Esha and Kim sound good. I’m glad you have them.

Happy late Thanksgiving. 

Gator.

****************

The smell of it hits him at the door.

He’s been to Dot’s enough times now that the house has its own geography in his head - the three porch steps, the door that sticks slightly in its frame, the right turn into the living room, the left into the kitchen where the island is, where he knows to put his cane. He knows the distance from the front door to the couch. He knows which floorboard creaks in the hallway and has learned to step over it out of habit, though he’s not sure why, nobody minds.

But he doesn’t know this smell. This is new.

Turkey and something sweet - sweet potato maybe, or the cranberry sauce Wayne has been making since seven this morning according to Dot, who had called at eight to tell him this in the tone of someone filing a report. Underneath that, there’s sage, butter, cinnamon, and the dry heat of an oven that’s been on since early morning. It’s a lot. It fills the house. He stands in the doorway for a moment longer than necessary, just holding it.

“You okay?” Dot, from the kitchen.

“Yeah,” he says. “Just - it smells good.”

He can hear her deciding not to say something, which is its own kind of saying it.

“Come on in,” she tells him. “Wayne needs someone to tell him the stuffing is fine.”

“Is it fine?” 

“Oh yeah, it’s incredible,” she smiles. “But he needs to hear it from someone other than me and Scotty.”

He hears Wayne working at the stove with the concentrated energy of a man who takes his cooking seriously and knows it. Gator can hear him moving - the rhythm of someone who knows their own kitchen completely, who has been cooking in this space for years and doesn’t need to think about where anything is. He finds that comforting in a way he doesn’t examine.

“Gator,” Wayne says, without turning around. “Glad you’re here. What do you know about stuffing?”

“Nothing,” he says, as a cold Coke bottle is pressed into his hand. “Not a damn thing.”

“Perfect,” Wayne says. “Unbiased opinion. Try this.”

Something is put in front of him - a spoon, he thinks, and then the smell of it, sage and butter and something else, something that’s been cooking long enough to become its own thing. He tries it.

“It’s good,” he says.

“Of course it’s good,” Wayne almost laughs, satisfied. “Dot thinks I put too much rosemary in.”

“Hey, I didn’t say too much,” Dot cuts in, from somewhere behind him. “I said a lot.”

“Those are the same thing, Dottie.”

“They’re not.”

He stands in their kitchen listening to them argue about herbs with the ease of people who have been arguing about the same things for years and enjoy it, and something in his gut does something he doesn’t have a word for. Not envy. Not quite. Something adjacent to it, and also something else entirely.

Scotty arrives from upstairs at some point - he hears her on the stairs, the footsteps of a teenager descending without urgency - and she says hey, Gator, in his direction, which is a little warmer than the first dinner, and then she immediately starts an argument with Wayne about the music he’s got playing, which Wayne loses, and then the kitchen fills with something loud and vaguely familiar that Scotty informs him is essential Thanksgiving listening, which he has doubts about but doesn’t say a word.

He finds a place at the kitchen island and stays there. Not in the way, not quite participating, just being present. Learning the choreography of it. Dot passes him things without being asked - a dish to hold, something to mash, small tasks that fold him into the preparation without asking him to know what he’s doing. He notices she’s doing it. He doesn’t say anything.

At the table Wayne says grace, which Gator hadn’t expected - a short, plain thing, nothing elaborate, nothing like his father’s self-indulgent speeches - just gratitude for the food and the people around the table and the year that’s been. He sits with his hands in his lap while Wayne talks and thinks about the years before, the Thanksgivings in Lehigh that weren’t really Thanksgivings, that were just days when Roy was present and required things of people and called it a celebration.

This is different. This is the thing itself, he thinks. Whatever this is supposed to be - this is it.

“Could you pass the cranberry sauce?” Dot asks, to him specifically.

He finds it. He passes it. He gets it right.

“Thank you, hon,” she says, exactly as she would to Wayne or Scotty, exactly as though he’s always been here, exactly as though this is ordinary.

He decides to let it be ordinary.

Later, when Scotty has disappeared back upstairs and Wayne is doing something in the kitchen that involves a lot of clattering, Dot sits beside him on the couch.

“You doing okay?” she asks. Second time today.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think so.”

“Good,” she says, her hand on his arm. And then, after a moment, she leans in beside him, conspiratorially, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Save me from more playlist fights at Christmas?”

He thinks about it. About the smell at the door, and Wayne’s stuffing, and the cranberry sauce passed correctly, and Scotty’s playlist, and grace said plainly over a table that had room for him at it.

“Okay,” he says. “I’d like that.”

****************

Re: (no subject)

From: [email protected] 

To: [email protected] 

Date: 03 Dec 2025

Hi Gator,

December on the coast is a whole different thing from the rest of the year. The sea has been genuinely angry this week - two days of storms that kept us off the beach entirely, which Flynn took as a personal affront. He’s been pacing the cabin and whining at the door, stopping sometimes to look at me as if I’m responsible for the weather, which I’m not, for the record. We did get out yesterday when it eased off, but we stayed well back from the waterline - the waves have been coming up high and fast and neither of us felt like finding out what that felt like up close. The big logs on the shore have been rearranged by the storms, some of them shifted twenty feet from where they usually sit. Flynn assessed the situation and decided his usual log was unacceptable in its new position and staged a small protest. I let him have it. It’s been a hard week for the dog.

Work is steady. We’re in the quieter stretch before the end of year reporting period, which means I can breathe for a few weeks before everything gets busy again in January. I’ve been using the time to get ahead on some things, which is either virtuous or compulsive depending on how you look at it. Probably both.

I’ve been watching the weather reports for the midwest this week - I do that sometimes, check the forecasts for North Dakota out of habit. I’ve started checking Minnesota too, lately. How’s the snow in Stillwater? I keep seeing warnings for the region. I imagine the bus route gets interesting in winter.

I hope you’re keeping warm.

Re: (no subject)

From: [email protected] 

To: [email protected] 

Date: 07 Dec 2025

Flynn staging a protest is the funniest thing I’ve heard all week. 

Yes, the snow is definitely here now. It’s been snowing since the end of November, on and off. The bus route is fine - the drivers know what they’re doing and the city keeps the main roads clear. The halfway mark is different in the snow, the sound is different, the way the wheels sound on the road, the way the air feels when the doors open at each stop. Everything is quieter. I didn’t expect that, how quiet it gets. In Lehigh the snow was loud somehow, or maybe just everything around it was loud and the snow didn’t change that. Here it just settles. The whole city settles under it and gets quiet and I find that I don’t mind it at all.

I don’t know what the weather is like where you are now - I don’t know what it’s like on the coast in winter. But I remember what snow looked like in North Dakota. The plains especially. Nothing stops it out there, it just goes, as far as you can see in every direction and then further. I remember thinking it looked like the end of the world and also like the beginning of it somehow. I don’t know if that makes sense. Did it feel like that for you?

I’ve been thinking about Christmas. Dot’s already sent me approximately nine hundred messages about the playlist argument situation, which I’m staying out of. I told her she’s on her own with that one. Scotty and Wayne have these running battles about music - there’s nothing angry in it, but they argue and fight about bands and songs and playlists and. I’ve never seen that before. They fight like they’re having fun about it. I think they are. They always laugh, at the end.

This is going to sound strange. I was thinking about the office - the one in Dickinson, the main building. And I remembered you always had a little Christmas tree. In the corner of your office, or near your desk, I can’t remember exactly where. Little green thing, covered in glitter. Do you still have it?

Give Flynn a scratch from me.

Stay warm. Gator.

Re: (no subject)

From: [email protected] 

To: [email protected] 

Date: 10 Dec 2025

Hey,

I can’t believe you remember that tree. I bought it in K Mart in a rush one morning on the way to work, on a whim. I saw it at the counter and just grabbed it, and then once it was on my desk it looked so pathetic being the only Christmas thing in there, so I went back after my shift and bought the lights and glitter and paper chains and ornaments. I managed to fit everything in a box the next January and I stored it in the basement, beside the uniform supply room. The box is probably still down there. Maybe someone found it, and it’s being used again?

The coast is usually mild but stormy. It doesn’t get so cold where I am, but further inland or on higher ground it can get colder and there’s usually snow at some point. I mean, I say mild, it’s somewhere around forty-five degrees which is still pretty damn cold but not cold enough for ice or snow.  The rain, though. Some days the rain feels endless. It seeps in everywhere, into your bones even. It comes down hard and fast, then eases just a little before the wind brings in more heavy rain. It’s thick and relentless, every day. Weirdly, I like it. I like the dramatic weather. It feels like the whole coast is getting clean.

I remember the snow, and yeah, it felt like the end and the beginning all at once for me too. I remember how quiet the plains got, even with the wind. It was like a thick blanket had been laid out over everything. It was beautiful.  I miss it, sometimes. I miss parts of it.

How are you feeling about Christmas and New Years? Any plans? You and the guys in the home going out on the town?

Flynn appreciated the scratch.  I appreciated the email.

Talk to you later.

Re: (no subject)

From: [email protected] 

To: [email protected] 

Date: 16 Dec 2025

The coast getting clean - I like that. It sounds like exactly the right way to think about it.

I hope someone found the box in the basement. Things should get to keep being useful.

Christmas. I’m going to Dot’s - that was settled at Thanksgiving, her idea, I said yes before I’d finished thinking about it which seems to be a pattern when I’m with her. Wayne is already in some kind of pre-Christmas cooking preparation phase that Dot says is both impressive and exhausting. The playlist situation has escalated. I’ve been asked to weigh in and I’ve declined. I’m staying out of it. This is not my battle.

Mikey is going back to his family in Duluth for the week. Dom is moving out soon. Britt is taking some time off. The house will be quiet for a few days between Christmas and New Year, just me and the overnight staff. I don’t mind quiet. I’ve gotten used to quiet.

It’s been a while since I’ve done Christmas properly. A long while. I don’t really know what to expect from it, if I’m honest. Dot will make it okay. She’s good at that, making things okay without making a thing of making them okay. I’m grateful for that, even if I don’t always tell her.

Legally I am not permitted to go out on the town in any capacity. Strict ten pm curfew and regular drug and alcohol testing. I’ve dealt with it fine since May. 

What about you? Esha and Kim again?

Stay dry. Gator.

Re: (no subject)

From: [email protected] 

To: [email protected] 

Date: 21 Dec 2025

Hi Gator,

May is a long time to have dealt with it all fine. I’m proud that you’ve done that.

Esha and Kim are hosting Christmas Eve this year - their place is bigger than mine and Kim cooks so much you’d think twenty people were invited. She fills the whole kitchen with food, and we basically graze on it all night even after the elaborate meal she cooks to go with the snacks. There’s a loose group of friends they always invite for these things, some of them I haven’t seen for months. It’ll be good. It always is.

After that I’ll be on my own, which is exactly how I like it. I don’t fly home for Christmas - my mother is in Ohio now and going back invites questions I don’t have good answers for, and I’d rather not spend the holiday explaining myself or the last few years to people who knew me before. Flynn and I will stay here. I’ve taken some PTO over the holidays, and I’m looking forward to the time off. I’ll cook something good, drink something good, walk the beach on Christmas morning if the weather holds. 

There’s a real nice quality to the coast at Christmas when there’s no-one around - the sea doesn’t know it’s a holiday, the logs on the shore don’t know, Flynn doesn’t know or doesn’t care. Everything just continues. I find that comforting rather than lonely, which I know sounds strange but I think you might understand it.

New Year’s Eve I’ll pop into Tom and June Henderson’s place for an hour - they live nearby and always have people over, it’s warm and easy and I don’t have to stay long. New Year’s Day Kim drags us all out for a walk in the woods, which is non-negotiable and actually very good once you’re out there.

I’m glad Dot will make your holiday okay. She sounds like someone special.

Happy Christmas, Gator. I hope it’s a good one.

****************

You wake at nine, which is late for you, Flynn already at the bedroom door with the mournful whine of a dog who has decided that nine o’clock is a frankly unreasonable hour and he’s bored of waiting for you.

Your head is making its feelings known. Not badly - you’d had the sense to drink water before bed, which was the right call - but enough that the light through the curtains is doing something unhelpful and you lie still for a moment, taking stock.

Merry Christmas to you.

Kim and Esha’s last night had been exactly what it was supposed to be - too much food and too much wine and the bright warmth of a room full of people who’ve chosen each other, the fire going, someone’s mixtape doing its best work. Gabriel had been there, back from Stockholm for the holidays, easy and warm and exactly as he’d always been. You’d hugged him hello and talked for a while and somewhere in the middle of it you’d noticed - registered, filed, made note of - that there was nothing there. Not absence exactly, just… nothing new. He felt like someone you’d known a long time, comfortably, without a hint of a spark left between you. He felt like a friend and nothing more. You’d noticed that and moved on and had another glass of wine and danced badly in Kim’s kitchen at midnight, which was the right thing to do.

You noticed it again, briefly, walking home.

You’re noticing it now, and then you’re not, because Flynn is making a sound that means the situation has become urgent.

Alright, you tell him. Alright.

**

The beach is wild.

The wind is coming off the water hard and fast, the kind that gets inside your coat regardless of how well you’ve zipped and fastened it, and the waves are enormous - not dangerous, not today, but impressive, the kind of waves that make you feel appropriately small. The logs on the shore are half-buried in sand and stones from the recent storms. Flynn’s usual log is barely visible.

Today, Flynn doesn’t care. There are no canine protests today. Flynn is magnificent in this weather, bounding along the waterline with the loose joyful energy of a dog who has decided that wind is just more air and more air is always good. You watch him and feel, despite your sore head and the cold and the spray coming off the waves, something uncomplicated and good.

Happy.

The beach is completely empty. Just you and Flynn and the old logs and the sea, all of you exactly where you should be.

You walk further than usual. The cold is helping, the salt air cleansing, the cobwebs clearing with each gust. By the time you turn back you’re properly awake and your sore head has receded to a distant suggestion and Flynn is running circles around you with the enthusiasm of a dog who has thoroughly enjoyed himself and wants you to know it. He barks like he’s telling you all about it.

Good boy, you tell him. Good Christmas.

**

The shower is long and hot. You stand under it until the bathroom is entirely steam and then you stay a little longer. Then you put on the clothes you’d laid out the night before - the big soft jumper, the oldest pair of sweatpants, the thick socks - and you pad downstairs and feed Flynn and put the kettle on and survey the contents of the fridge.

Pastries. The canapés you’d made yesterday and wrapped in foil. The good cheese, saved for today. The bottle of something fizzy that’s been in the fridge since Tuesday.

You put the pastries and canapés in the oven. You make coffee. You find the tv remote.

This is your Christmas. You built it over three years, incrementally, one decision at a time - the walk, the shower, the movies, the food, the simple pleasure of a whole day with nowhere to be and no-one to perform okayness for. You love it. You love every quiet hour of it.

Flynn settles comfortably on the couch beside you, which he’s still not supposed to do, and you don’t say anything about it.

**

By lunchtime you’re two movies in and the pastries are gone and Flynn is asleep with his head on your thigh and outside the wind has picked up fiercely, the trees visible through the kitchen window moving in long slow sweeps.

The movie catches your attention again, and you laugh out loud, loud enough that Flynn lifts his head, half awake, before flopping back down to your thigh, and you reach for your phone before you’ve consciously decided to.

You stop, and put your phone back down.

You look at the television, where the scene is still playing, and you think to yourself, he’d find that funny. Not a general he. A specific one. You’d wanted to send him a message, a quick one, the kind you’d send to Kim or Esha without thinking - do you remember this, this bit, listen to this - and the impulse had arrived so naturally that you’d already had the phone in your hand before you’d caught it.

That’s not what he is to you, is he?

Flynn shifts in his sleep, his legs twitching, chasing something. You put your hand on him and feel the warmth of his chest rising and falling.

Outside the wind gusts through the trees and the coast roars somewhere below the cliffs and the movie continues, the scene already past, and you think, I could just email him. Not a text - you don’t have his number, he doesn’t have yours, that’s not what this is (is it?). But you could email him. Later, perhaps, when you’ve thought about what to say. Or you could not - you could just watch the movie, and tell him about it next time you write anyway.

You watch the movie.

You’re smiling, a little. You notice that too.

****************

New Year’s Eve he spends alone, which is what he wanted.

Mikey is in Duluth. Dom’s somewhere else. Britt is on vacation. The overnight worker - a newer guy named Pete who he’s met twice and likes - does his checks and leaves him to it. The house is the quietest it’s been since May, just the sounds of the street outside, cars and distant music and at some point the sound of people who have decided New Years Eve fireworks are worth standing outside for.

He’s in bed by ten.

He lies in the dark and listens to the house settle and thinks about nothing in particular, which he’s gotten better at. The year ending. The year that contained May, and the bus route, and the halfway mark, and Joshua, and Dot, and the group, and Marie’s yellow door, and the omelettes, and the emails. All of it fitting into the last seven months of one year, which seems impossible and is nonetheless true.

He doesn’t remember much about last New Year, and what he does remember he’d rather not. He knows where he was - Larson Unit, North Dakota, his second facility, the one that had decided early on that Roy Tillman’s blind son was worth making an example of. He knows what he’d taken to get him through the night, something that cost him more commissary credits than he had and had left him somewhere between sleep and not, and he knows what came after - the door, the hands, the fierceness of the things done to him by men who knew they wouldn’t be stopped, and others who let it happen. He’s learned, with Joshua’s help, not to follow that particular thread any further than he has to. He takes a long breath, counts to twenty, and comes back to tonight. The quiet house. Pete doing his rounds downstairs. Tomorrow, and Dot picking him up at two. It’s the end of a very long year.

He doesn’t need to see it through to midnight. He’s asleep before it arrives.

**

Dot picks him up at two pm the next day, which she’d arranged the week before, the way she does when she’s decided on something and he doesn’t really have a say in the matter. The curfew exemption had required phone calls and paperwork that she hadn’t mentioned to him until it was done, which is exactly how Dot operates. 

You didn’t have to do all that, he’d said, when she told him.

I know, she’d replied with a chuckle. Pack a bag, I’m bustin’ you out for the night.

The drive to Scandia takes the usual thirty minutes, no detours or diversions today. Dot has something on the radio - not the humming this time, just listening, comfortable in the car with someone else and not needing to fill it. He sits in the passenger seat with his bag at his feet and feels the new year begin through the window he can’t see out of, which is a thought he has and then lets go of, the way Joshua has taught him to let go of things that aren’t useful.

How was last night? Dot asks him, somewhere on the highway.

Quiet, he says. Good quiet.

That’s nice, hon, she says, with a gentle pat on his leg.

That’s the end of it.

**

The house smells different in January - woodsmoke and something baked, the dusty heat of the central heating doing battle against the cold coming in from outside. Wayne meets them at the door as usual, with the easy welcome of a man who is genuinely glad to see him arrive, which is one of the things he’s come to understand about Wayne - that the welcome is always real, never faked for his or Dot’s benefit.

Scotty is on the couch with her phone - he hears Dot chastising her for it as he’s hanging up his coat - and the huff of annoyance when Dot takes the phone from her hand and puts it on the table with a thud is as familiar as it is amusing. She reminds him of himself.

Hey Gator, she says.

Hey, Scotty.

They’ve gotten better at this, the two of them. The subtle calibration of how much space to take up around each other, how much to say and when to say nothing. She’s still cautious, still watching, still filing things away with the determined attention of someone who takes people seriously. But the caution has a different aspect now than it did at the first dinner. It’s not wariness. It’s just attention.

Wayne has made a casserole, which has been going since morning apparently, the smell of it meeting them at the door alongside the woodsmoke. Dot had told him this in the car with the satisfied tone of someone who knows Wayne’s beef casserole is worth driving thirty minutes for, which it turns out it is.

They eat at the table, the four of them, the new year settling around them. The conversation is easy - Wayne’s fishing plans for spring, Scotty’s band resuming practice next week, the incompetence of their bassist which Scotty describes with the exasperation of a girl who is fully baffled by the situation. Dot tells them about a book she’s been reading, the latest from the local book group she joined in the summer. He listens and contributes when he has something to contribute, which is more often than it used to be.

They’re talking about pets - Scotty wants to get a cat, which Wayne is open to but Dot is more cautious about, something about shedding and litter boxes giving her the dry heaves.

At some point, semi-related, he says, “…my friend has a dog. A German Shepherd. The dog does therapy work - visits care homes, that kind of thing.”

He’s smiling before he’s finished the sentence. He can feel it arriving on his face without his permission, the gentle joy of it, and he lets it stay because by the time he’s noticed it it’s already there and there’s not much to be done.

He hears Dot make a sound - not quite a gasp, something in the region of one - and then the small deliberate click of her teeth hitting her glass as she drinks.

Wayne says nothing. He chews on his casserole, deliberately, and Gator’s sure he hears Dot kick out at his leg under the table.

“Wait, hold on -” Scotty, out of the blue, her fork tapping the edge of her plate idly.

He turns his head towards her voice, hoping for the best.

“- you have a friend?”

She sounds even more bemused than when she was talking about her wayward bassist.

”Yeah,” he tells her, with more nonchalance than he thought he was capable of. He feels a younger version of himself smirk, somewhere deep inside.

“Like an actual friend? That you talk to regularly?”

“Every week or so, yeah.”

He can almost hear the cogs in her mind turning.

“What kind of friend?” she asks him, eventually. “Like - is this a blind friend or a crime friend?”

Dot makes another sound, less ambiguous than the first. “Scotty Lyon, that’s - that is enough -”

”What? It’s a reasonable question. It’s not like Gator’s got that many options -”

He hears both Dot and Wayne erupt, in their own quiet way, trying to shut down any more insensitive remarks and that’s quite enough Scotty and you can’t just ask someone if their friend is blind or a criminal - that’s not how things work!

He sits with it for a moment, then bursts out laughing, loud and loose with it. The table around him falls suddenly quiet, their familial bickering forgotten. He can feel all three of them - Dot with her wine glass, Wayne with whatever expression Wayne is wearing, and Scotty, indignant and prepared to wait for his answer - turning to look at him.

“Neither,” he says once the laughter has settled. “She’s just a friend.”

“She.” Of course Scotty picked up on that.

“Yeah. She.”

”Your friend with a dog. What’s the dog’s name?”

Someone’s fork scrapes on a plate.

“Flynn. He’s a German Shepherd.”

He hears her repeat the name under her breath, trying it out. “That’s a good name.”

He smiles again, deliberately this time.  “Yeah, that’s what I said too.”

He hears her go back to her food. He hears Dot set her wine glass down with great care. Wayne says something about the casserole that nobody quite responds to, which Wayne accepts with his usual equanimity.

The dinner continues, and New Year’s Day continues with it. And he sits at the table in the warm house in Scandia and thinks about a German Shepherd on a Pacific Northwest beach and a woman who told him the coast gets clean in the rain, and he lets himself smile about it because Scotty has already seen it and there’s no point pretending otherwise.

**

Dot shows him to the guest room later, long after dinner.

The room has been prepared - he can tell from the freshness of the air, the slight lavender hint to it, the way the space is clear around the bed, the nightstand accessible, his phone charger already in place within easy reach. Dot would have thought about all of this. Dot would have moved the furniture slightly, checked the route from door to bed to bathroom, done it quietly without making it a big deal. That’s who she is.

He doesn’t say anything about it. Saying anything would make it a thing, but he squeezes her hand once, then twice, and she says his name, just his name, before she goes.

She leaves him to get comfortable, and he finds the edge of the bed. The sheets are crisp and slightly cool the way guest room sheets always are, and the house settles around him - Wayne’s television playing low somewhere downstairs, Scotty’s music through the wall, the January snow coming down hard against the windows.

He gets changed, slips into bed, pulls the thick quilt up to his ears and thinks, this is a good place to be.

He sleeps.

****************

Re: (no subject)

From: [email protected] 

To: [email protected] 

Date: 06 Jan 2026

Hi Gator,

Happy New Year. I hope the house was okay on New Year’s Eve - I thought about you, when the fireworks started going off along the coast. Flynn was unimpressed by the noise and spent the evening sitting on my feet, which I appreciated. How was dinner with Dot and her family? Any more music fights or has that all calmed down? The more you talk about Scotty, the more I like her. I think teenage me would have wanted to be friends with her.

I went for my usual long walk with the group on Saturday morning. The forest was quiet - it usually is in January, most of the day-trippers are gone and it’s just the regulars, moving through the trees in the cold and the wet. It was good. It’s always good. I looked like someone had turned a hose against me when I got back to the car, and Flynn didn’t look much better, but the wet was worth it.

I was talking to someone, on the walk. She said something that’s been sitting with me since - the details aren’t important, it’d take too much typing to explain and it’s too cold to type that much today. But I’d been talking about our emails, about who you are now and a little about what happened, and she asked me something I couldn’t answer.

So I’ll ask you instead, since you were there too.

Was any of it real? The outpost. Your apartment. That winter. Was any of it real, or was it just… circumstance? Two people stuck somewhere, in a shitty situation, making the best of it.

I’ve been wondering about that for a long time. I think I need to know.

Re: (no subject)

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected] 

Date: 09 Jan 2026

Yes. It was real. Most of it anyway.

The part where I. The diner. What happened there. That wasn’t real in the same way. It was a thing I had to do to get you out of something that would have been bad. Worse. And I know it was bad enough already. I know that, I do. I told you I was sorry for it and I meant it. But it was real, the outpost. The walk. And my place and everything before that. All of it.

It. 

It was the realest thing I’d ever had and it fucking terrified me.

I was in no position to be starting anything with anyone. You know some of what my life was then, maybe not all of it, but you probably know enough or can guess. And I knew that. I knew what it would mean for you to be anywhere near me or any of it and I let it happen anyway because I wanted it. Wanted you. That’s on me. I was selfish and I let it happen and then I had to end it the way I did because it was the only way I knew how to get you clear of what was coming.

I know that’s not an excuse. I’m not offering it as one. You asked me a question and I’m answering it.

It was real. 

And I’m glad you asked.

Gator.

****************

The email alert pings on his phone the next morning, when he’s sitting at the table with Mikey and Britt, listening to them bicker about the way she makes the coffee.

He holds the phone to his ear, and listens as the software reads it out to him.

That’s all I needed to hear.

And then - a string of digits.

I’ve made you use that speech to text software for too long. You can call, or send a voicenote, or text, or whatever.

He pushes his chair back from the table, ignoring Britt’s complaints when it scrapes harshly against the tiled floor. He finds the wall, then the open arch that leads to the hallway, then the bannister, then the stairs. Then his room. He listens to the email again, and again, making absolutely sure she’s given him what he thinks she has.

Her phone number.

He tells the phone to save it as a new contact.

**

He saves her contact as apt3b, not quite trusting himself to add her full name to it yet.

He doesn’t tell anyone.

Not Mikey, who is now echoing Britt’s complaints about the chair scrape when he comes back downstairs, and who doesn’t notice anything different in him because there isn’t anything different to notice, not on the outside. Not Britt, who makes a fresh pot of coffee with great pointed emphasis and slides a mug in his direction, almost goading him into complaining about it.

He doesn’t. Not today. (He finds Britt’s coffee to be better than Greg’s, but that’s no big compliment). 

He doesn’t tell Dot, who calls on Sunday evening to ask how he’s doing and gets the same answer she usually gets - fine, good, yeah I’m eating properly - and who he can hear deciding not to push for anything more, which is the thing about Dot, she always knows when not to push, and he’s grateful for it in a way he couldn’t have articulated six months ago.

He holds her number - the olive branch of it - like he’s shielding a spark from the wind.

That’s the only way he can describe it, even to himself. Something small and certain, cupped in his hands, kept out of the weather. Not fragile exactly - he doesn’t think it’s fragile - but it is private. His. The decision already made, sitting quietly in him, waiting for the right moment the way he’s learned to wait for things since May. Not anxiously. Just knowing it’s coming, and being okay with that, and letting the days be what the days are in the meantime.

Monday is quiet, and Tuesday is a full day.

The bus, the halfway mark arriving in the January dark because the days are still short, the icy cold of a Minnesota Tuesday in the second week of January. The group - Marie describing what she heard that morning, the sound of her street, the rhythm of it, less and less of what she might have seen - and him sitting with that the way he always sits with it, present and careful and not naming what he notices. Another kitchen session with Michael, something with fish this time, the smell of it not pleasant but he keeps it to himself. Joshua at four, the session running its usual course, him answering everything honestly except the one thing sitting quietly in his chest, which Joshua probably notices and doesn’t push on, because Joshua also knows when not to push.

He gets home at six. Mikey is watching something loud in the common room, the smell of whatever he and Britt made for dinner is lingering in the kitchen. He makes a plate of the leftovers and eats it at the table and washes up after, the ordinary end of an ordinary Tuesday, and then he goes upstairs.

Greg comes on duty later and sticks his head around the door at eight, the way he always does at the start of his shift. “Doin’ alright Gator?”

“Uh huh,” he says, fingers paused over the Braille book he’s been chipping away at for weeks. “Good day.”

“Nice,” Greg says, with a rap of his knuckles on the doorframe. “I’ll leave you to it.”

The door closes. The house settles. Downstairs the common room television is a low murmur through the floor, and outside the street is quieter, and his room is his room, the desk and the chair and the laptop and the phone on the nightstand where he left it when he picked up the book.

He sits on the edge of the bed.

He picks up the phone.

He tells the phone to open her details - apt3b, sitting there, the number underneath it - and he holds the phone for a moment, just feeling the weight of it, and the Tuesday evening quiet of the house around him.

Before he can think better of it, he tells the phone to make the call.

It rings once. He sits very still on the edge of the bed, both feet flat on the floor, his free hand pressed against his thigh. It rings again. He becomes aware that he’s holding his breath and makes himself stop doing that. It rings a third time and he thinks, she’s not going to -

Hello?

The word lands in the quiet room like something physical. Her voice, real and present and coming through the phone in his hand. He knows this voice. He’s been carrying this voice for six years without knowing that’s what he was doing.

“Hi, uh. Hey. It’s me. Gator.”

He hears her take a breath, sharp and involuntary. Then she swallows.

Gator. It’s really you. God…

Something happens in his chest. Not the breakdown of Dot’s kitchen, not the shaking - something quieter than that, something that arrives without drama and sits down and stays. He presses his free hand harder against his thigh, his fingers digging into the denim of his jeans.

There’s a long moment of quiet, where he just listens to her breathe down the line and knows that she’s doing the same. The house is settled around him - the television a murmur through the floor, cars moving along the January street outside - and none of it matters, none of it is the point, the point is her breathing in his ear and him breathing in hers and the six years between this call and the last time they were in the same space together folding into something smaller than he expected.

I wasn’t sure you’d call, she says. I thought maybe calling would be… I don’t know. I guess I just wasn’t sure you’d use my number. I was going to email you tonight actually, but… She trails off. He hears her swallow again. I’m rambling. Sorry.

“Jesus,” he says, and his voice comes out rougher than he intended, rougher than he was prepared for. “You sound just like I remembered.”

The silence that follows has a different colour to the one before. Warmer, somehow. Fuller.

She smiles. He can hear it in the way her breath changes, the slight shift in the silence on her end, Flynn moving somewhere in the background of wherever she is.

Yeah, she says. So do you.

He stays on the edge of the bed for a long time after the call ends, both feet still flat on the floor, the phone warm in his hand.

He asks HAL for the call duration. Twenty-three minutes and forty-two seconds. If anyone asked him what they’d talked about on the call, he’s not sure he could give a clear answer, but he knows it felt like they spoke for less time and somehow also much more time than twenty-three minutes and forty-two seconds.

He thinks, okay.

His vision vignettes as he pours another sugar into his styrofoam cup of coffee. He only likes two, but now he’s lost count, opening packet after packet just to give himself an excuse to stay here.

Morning light pours in through the open windows on the east side of the office building, bathing you in gold. You’re so bright and beautiful, Keys can hardly even look at you. 

Briana’s voice filters through his thoughts, tuning him back into the conversation. “I like him and everything, but the sex is just—I don’t know—”

“Bland?” you offer. 

Briana pauses, giving you a weighted look before correcting. “Silent.”

You make a sympathetic sound, oblivious to your eavesdropper, whose cheeks are turning a charming shade of pink. 

“There’s nothing worse than a silent man in bed,” you say, stirring your coffee. “I mean, we want to hear what we’re doing to them, you know? Like, moaning a little won’t kill them. And add in a little dirty talk? God, that shit never fails to get me off.”

Another sugar packet rips in his fingers and he pours without really thinking.

Good lord, this coffee is going to be undrinkable.

But the cup of joe is the literal least of his worries, since he’s shoving his hips up against the edge of the table just to keep from getting a hard at hearing you talk like that. You’re his co-worker. You sit across from him every day.

He can’t be getting hard at work. And especially, not right next to you. 

“Exactly!” Briana groans, enthusiastically. “So, I don’t know what to do about it.”

Keys’ head turns towards the open office floor, but his feet feel like they’ve grown roots, planting him right there in the dingy carpet, forcing him to listen. 

You hum, a familiar sound that means you’re thinking. “Well, if he’s into it, maybe listen to some spicy audios together? There are some really talented creators out there that can give you both some inspiration.”

He glances up just in time to watch Briana’s dark eyes cut over to you mischievously as she takes a sip. 

“Good idea,” she says, “I’m going to…” 

Somehow, Keys finally uproots himself and slips away with his cup of sugary bean water. 

He barely registers the rows of cubicles and windows swirling around him in colors of gray, blue, white, and black, too busy replaying your words over and over in his head.

…nothing worse than a silent man in bed.

…add in a little dirty talk?

…never fails to get me off.

His office chair squeaks under his weight and his glasses land on his desk with a clatter. Planting his elbows on his armrests, he breathes a deep sigh and scrubs his hands over his face. 

Focus, Keys. 

He replaces his glasses, and shifts forward in his chair, forcing his eyes back to his waiting code. The predictability of numbers—those never changing zeros and ones—usually settles him. But, not today. 

He tries hard to force all thoughts of you from his head but—oh, it’s useless. 

There you are, spread out on his navy sheets, writhing underneath him. His mouth trails soft kisses down your throat, over your shoulder, and lower…

You let out a needy whine, hands twisting up in his hair, legs parting for him on instinct. And in his imagination, he opens his mouth to say something hot—anything—but no words come. He wouldn’t know what to say. 

He has a few trademark moves in bed. I mean, who doesn’t? And the girls he’s been with always leave happy. 

But…is he silent? He doesn’t really know, actually. Never recorded himself…or anything…maybe he should—

“You good?” 

Your voice slams through his thoughts. The world whips back into focus, and Keys jumps in his chair. Suddenly, the overhead light’s too bright, and the AC feels like an icy blast, and you’re there, standing over your desk, staring at him with concern. 

“What?” He squeaks, then clears his throat. “Y-yeah. Yeah, of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

You shrug, and take your seat across from him. “I don’t know, you just look…tired, I guess.”

He just grunts and returns his gaze to his computer screen. “Just…work stuff.”

You hum in agreement and turn back to your screen as well. 

As much as he bitches about being shoved up in the corner of the office floor, the only space with a huge window immediately to his left, the spot really does have its perks. 

It’s annoying because it’s so bright he has to squint to see his screen most of the time. But the way the sun shines through the blinds, painting you in thin lines of shadow, lighting up your eyes and lashes?

He wouldn’t trade this spot for anything. 

Shit. Now he’s staring. 

Irritated, he forces his gaze away and pushes his glasses up higher on his nose. 

His hand finds his mouse and he navigates to his work, but for one fleeting second, his curser hovers over the new tab button. 

Now, Keys is a complete and total nerd, so, of course he’s no stranger to the internet. Especially the deep, dark parts of it. He’s fallen victim to those late night deep dives on reddit pages more times than he can count. And somewhere, in the back of his mind, he remembers coming across those ‘spicy audios’ you gushed about earlier. 

What did you call them? Talented creators? Which ones were you talking about? What things did they say? What did you like about it?

All it would take is a few clicks on his keyboard, and he’d get all those answers to his questions. But he quickly shakes his head to clear it and clicks back on his code with a guilty look over his shoulder.

The white wall stares at him, disapproving. 

What the fuck has gotten into him? He cannot be looking this shit up at work! 

He really has it bad.

When he’s back home, in the comfort of his own gaming desk, only then will he let himself investigate this newfound scrap of information on you. 

Later, he promises himself. Later. 

Well, it’s later. 

And Keys hasn’t got a single fucking line of code done yet. 

Which is why he’s stuck at work late, miserably trying to catch up on his project after everyone else has left for the day.

Everyone, that is, except for you.

Apparently, you also got behind, and you can’t afford to. Not with the new launch coming up.

Vinny came by to collect the trash a while back, and he didn’t see you in the back corner, so he turned off the lights, plunging you both into darkness. Neither of you have gotten up to turn them back on, choosing instead to work by the dim lights of your computer monitors. And even though the two of you keep saying you’re going to leave “any minute,” those minutes turn to hours, and you’re both still here. 

Alone.

The printer hums in the corner, and that blinking blue light on the side is driving Keys crazy. It keeps catching in the edge of his glasses, and the clicking of your mouse fills his ears. 

It’s constant. Unlike his. Which means you’re actually getting work done. Unlike him. 

Finally, your voice breaks the silence. 

“The street’s kinda loud tonight, isn’t it?”

Keys makes a noncommittal sound in this throat and doesn’t look up. 

Honestly, he hasn’t noticed the traffic humming far below the window, and he’s trying so hard not to look at you, not to think about you, that he doesn’t notice when you reach across over and grab his headphones by accident. 

It’s easy to get them confused. They look exactly the same, tangled up together at the edge of where your desks meet. Black. Standard issue. Company logo on the side. 

When Keys glances up and sees you with the headphones on, he sighs quietly in relief. 

It’s ridiculous, but up until this moment, he was hyper-aware of everything he was doing. Was he breathing too loudly? Could you hear his heartbeat? Was he readjusting himself too much when every thought of you in his bed gave him a hard-on? 

He tries to focus, he really does, but the numbers blur together on his screen. 

Music. 

That’s what he needs. 

He grabs the other pair of headphones, and when he settles them over his head, all he can hear is his own heartbeat slamming in his ears, reminding him of what a fucking loser he is. 

He should just ask you out. Like a normal person. But no. 

The foam cuffs press into the ear piece of his glasses, reminding him why he usually prefers the wired earbuds. But he’s lost them somewhere, and he can’t afford to go looking at the moment. 

The click of his mouse is silenced as he maneuvers it to pull up his music library. But, his cursor gets distracted on the way, hovering over that cursed new tab icon in the corner.

He risks another peek at you. 

Your brows furrow and you readjust your headphones, eyes still on your screen.

Resisting the urge to scrub a hand over his face in frustration, he turns his gaze back to his computer. If he’s honest with himself, he won’t be able to get any substantial work done until he satisfies his curiosity.

It’s risky, doing this at work. But there’s no way you can hear anything, and Keys is getting desperate. 

After a few hasty searches, he’s navigating the depths of…erotic audios. 

His eyes widen as he scrolls past the sprawling inventory of tropes and storylines. There are so many different kinds of fantasies, how would he know what you’re into? He leans in closer, scrolling carefully down the list until he hesitates on one in particular. 

Talk Nerdy To Me. 

The small blurb underneath catches his eye. 

Your tutor tries a new tactic to get you to study for your big test. Just how sexual can his acronyms get before you decide to study anatomy a different way?

His cursor hovers over the LISTEN NOW button. 

This is harmless enough, right? There’s even a little story. Like an audio book. Just way shorter. And way more explicit. And…yeah, this is so wrong, on so many levels. 

Beneath his conscience, however, sits a burning curiosity. Keys is analytic at heart. If there’s a question, he wants to find the answer. And, if listening to this will help him figure out what to say in bed…

Fuck it. 

The silenced click of his mouse through his headphones is as loud as a gunshot.

He waits, breath caught in his chest, heel tapping restlessly on the carpet as the little blue progress bar starts to move. 

But he doesn’t hear anything. 

He frowns and readjusts his headphones. 

Nothing. 

On impulse, he skips to the middle. Just in case there was a silent lull there at the beginning. 

Still nothing. 

He leans towards the screen nervously, and as he shifts, he glimpses you from behind your computer screen—and freezes. 

You’re staring at him, cheeks flush in the dim lighting, chest fluttering with every breath. 

And then, a small smirk begins at the corner of your mouth. It’s rueful and sinful, and… 

His stomach drops. 

Oh no. It’s in your headphones, isn’t it?

Oh, no, no, no, no—

His heart leaps in his chest as his hand flies to his mouse, scrambling to turn it off. 

Oh, God, where’s the stop button? 

There. That’s pause. Oh—he accidentally clicked it twice. Now it’s playing again. 

HOW DO YOU CLOSE THIS FUCKING THING?

You chuckle breathlessly, watching your genius coworker—who can code literally anything, by the way— flail around like a fish out of water when all he has to do is simply press the little red X on the top right of his screen. 

The mouse starts to slip around in his sweaty palm and Keys gives up, slamming the power button on his computer, and enveloping the both of you in silence. 

You stare at each other over your desks for a long second. 

Then, Keys rips his headphones off and rakes a hand through his hair. 

See? This is what he gets for being fucking curious. It gets him in trouble. He just needs to stick with what he knows—

He opens his mouth to apologize, to explain, to—beg for his dignity back? But you just slip the headphones down to hang around your throat and level his gaze with a soft smile. 

“Was that Bennett Brooks?” 

“W-what?” Keys croaks, shoving his glasses further onto his burning face. 

“I recognize the voice actor. Haven't heard his stuff in forever, though. He’s good—voice is a little raspy for my taste,” you shrug prettily. “But good.”

He swallows. “Oh.” 

The silent office presses in around you, so quiet he can almost hear your lashes click together when you blink at him. Suddenly, you whip his headphones off your neck and thrust them onto his desk. 

They land with a clatter. 

“Sorry,” you say. “I didn’t mean to take yours. By all means, don’t stop on my account.”

Keys lets out a choked sound, caught somewhere between a laugh and a cough. This is definitely making it into the top three most embarrassing moments of his life. 

“I’m n-not...” he stammers, “Not into that. Like…that.”

You shoot him a knowing look. “No?”

“No! Listen, I just—” he scrambles for an explanation as you just fucking sit there watching him. Smiling at him. “It was just research. Okay? Not a big deal—” 

The words barely escape his lips before he realizes his mistake. 

“Research?“ Your eyes light up and you lean forward in your seat. His eyes drop to the white V-neck button down you’re wearing—that third button you leave unfastened haunts him every single day. “Research is my specialty, Keys.”

Yes, he knows that. You’re a data analyst for the company. One of the best in the region, actually, wasting your time at the desk next to his. He should apologize again, or confess he overheard your conversation at the coffee bar. 

But the embarrassment burns hot, so instead, he clears his throat and hooks a finger in his shirt collar that’s currently suffocating him.

“It’s stupid, really,” Keys says at long last, and he hates how it comes out crackly. He clears his throat again, like that will help dislodge the panic in his chest. 

It doesn’t. 

You shrug, tilting your head in that cute way you do. “Didn’t sound stupid to me.”

You’re being so nice about it. Why are you always so nice?  “You know, I could help.” Your eyes linger on him and the air seems to grow ten degrees hotter. Then softer, you add, “…if you want.”

And just like that, all thoughts of project and deadlines glitch and vanish from his mind like a crashed browser. 

He’s nodding before he’s even really given it much thought.  

You smile and sit up in your chair. God, you’re radiant. “Okay. Let’s start with what exactly you want to research. Is it audios, specifically? Or—”

“No, no, it’s just…I think I…” Keys’ bottom lip catches between his teeth before he heaves out a heavy breath. “I want to get better. I guess.”

“Better at what? Sex?”

This time, Keys doesn’t hesitate. “Dirty talk.”

“Oh.” Your eyes flick to his lips for a split second before meeting his again. “Well, you’ve come to the right place.”

Keys adjusts in his chair, his dick is already twitching in his pants. “Yeah? So, you like this sort of thing? Guys’ voices dirty talking you and stuff. That…” He swallows hard. “Gets you off?”

You shrug again casually, like you’re talking about the weather. “It’s one way, yeah.”

Keys nods again. Too fast. Way too fucking fast. 

“So, do you have anyone in mind?” You ask. 

His pulse leaps. “What?”

“Well, you’ve got to be researching this for a reason, right? I mean, curiosity is a valid enough, don’t get me wrong. But is there someone…?” you trail off, unsure of how to finish. 

A silent moment stretches out between you as Keys decides how to answer. The digital clock on the wall, the rise and fade of the passing lights, all seem to look between you—waiting for something. 

Finally, Keys sighs. “Well, there is this girl.”

“Aha!” You lean your elbows on your desk, eyes brightening with interest. “Tell me.”

“It’s new. Like—” he chuckles, averting his gaze. “Really new. So.”

“It’s okay, Keys. We’re friends! We can talk about this kind of stuff.”

“I know!” he says defensively, although he’s not really sure why. “She’s just…into this sort of thing. Dirty talk. I think.”

“You think.”

“Yeah.”

You nod slowly, encouraging, if not a little teasing. “Okay…so, give me the rundown here. When’s your next date?”

“Uh. First one, actually. And…it’s…Thursday,” Keys stammers. 

“Thursday? Okay.” You look out the window. A passing car’s headlights shine across your face for a second before the computer light consumes you again. “Lucky girl. Where are you taking her? I mean—before the inevitable trip back to your place.” You swallow hard and busy yourself with re-organizing your pen cup as he scrambles for an answer. 

Chinese. 

You love that. 

He knows because the one time he picked you up for work when your car was in the shop, he caught a glimpse of your apartment through your front door. Your coffee table was littered with little takeout boxes, and he filed that away like a crow picking up a shiny screw and calling it a treasure. 

Yeah, he has it bad. 

“Uh. I was thinking that Chinese joint on the corner of Cross and Elm."

Your jaw drops. “I love that place!”

“Yeah,” he chuckles, raking a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I know.”

When you look up at him again, there’s a hint of a smile on your lips.

“Okay, so, we have three days to prepare you. What questions do you have?”

Leave it to you to make this sound like a standardized research paper. Well, now’s a good a chance as ever. He might never get this chance again.

Keys straightens in his chair, heel tapping the carpet so fast his leg is bouncing. 

“What do you—do girls,” he quickly corrects himself, “—want guys to say?” 

You frown. “What do you mean?”

Heat rushes to his face. “I mean, like, do they tell you how to…touch yourself? I don’t—I can’t even—”

“You’re overthinking it. There’s no magical combination of words to use." You gesture to his computer. "Here, let’s listen to the audio, it’ll help me explain—”

“Oh, no! We don’t have to do that!” Keys squeaks. 

You shoot him a look. “You said this is for research, right?”

“Yeah! Obviously. Totally.”

“Then you can’t half-ass it. If you really want to learn how to dirty talk for this girl, you gotta commit.”

He hesitates. 

“C’mon, Keys.” Your teeth close over the end of your pen and you gesture to his computer with your eyes, smirking as you settle into your chair. “Press play.”

Fuck. 

Your coworker, Keys, has been acting weird as fuck all day, and now you finally know why. 

He totally overheard your conversation with Briana at the coffee bar, earlier. 

Maybe it had something to do with the way you raised your voice on purpose, hoping to get through that head of hair and those brown eyes that seem to see everything except all the signals you’ve been dropping his way since you first started here. 

From behind your desk, you watch him eye the power switch on his computer like it’s some gigantic red button that says ‘don’t touch’ or else it will somehow World War III. 

Come to think of it, you might start World War III if it means getting your oblivious-as-he-is-cute-coworker to finally make a real move. 

Still, though, there’s a part of you that feels for the guy. He’s so nice, and good, and sweet, and fuck if you don’t want him to corrupt him a little.

Only in the ways he wants to be corrupted, of course. Which, apparently, involves digging into ancient audio porn on reddit after work hours. 

Oh, you are so into it. 

“Why are you so embarrassed, Keys?” you say gently. “Look, this is normal, okay? Being curious. And you want to make this girl feel good, right?”

The girl has to be you.

After all those coffees he’s brought you from that fancy place that he insists only adds three minutes to his commute, but in reality, probably adds, like, twenty? And the way his hand accidentally finds ways to brush yours, and then he acts as if he’s not jumping out of his skin at the contact?

If this girl is not you, then this crush you have on your nerdy, hot co-worker is about to be devastating. 

Keys blows out a breath. “Okay, fine.” 

His computer powers up with a familiar hum, and blue light cascades over his features again. 

God, he looks nervous. Why is that such a turn-on?

He looks so alone over there behind his desk as one lock of his brown hair falls over his eyes, brushing the rim of his glasses, when suddenly, you get an idea. 

“Wait, actually, no—” you mutter, standing up from your chair. 

Keys jumps like you’ve shot him. “Yeah,” he says, scrambling to turn distract himself with something else on his computer. “Yeah! No, we don’t—this is—”

“—I’m coming over there.”

“What?” Keys’ gaze snaps to yours. Then, he gestures to the space beside him in his workspace. “Here?” 

But you’re already rolling your chair over the carpet and behind his desk. It’s a tight fit, with these ergonomic chairs. Their wide armrests knock together as you slide in beside him. 

Keys’ cubicle is different. 

Technically, it’s the exact same as yours. The dimensions are the same, as well as your surroundings, but it smells like his cologne, and there’s that stack of board games he keeps hidden under his desk. 

“Okay,” you sigh, settling back in your chair. “If we’re going to do this, we do it right. Which means, starting from the top. Clearly, you know nothing of the subject—”

“I—” he starts, but you shoot him a look that has his jaw snapping shut. 

“Now, dirty talk is a broad subject, so, what kinds of things are you into?”

Keys shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess, it depends on what she’s into. I mean…” He threads his fingers behind his head and leans back in his computer chair in an obvious attempt at casualness. “What are you into?”

Smooth. Real smooth. 

You decide to go along with it. 

“I like a little of everything. Praise, instruction, degradation, fantasizing…but not every girl is the same—”

“Okay, let’s just do that, then,” he cuts you off, nodding once like it’s been decided. 

You have to bite your lip to keep from smiling. “Okay, I’ll press play.” 

You shift lean forward and your palm closes over his mouse. It’s slightly damp, like Keys’ fingers were clammy when he last touched it. 

“Wait!” His hand shoots out and grabs your wrist. “Like…out loud?”

You gesture to the darkness beyond. “Keys, no one is here.”

“No, I know, but…” his eyes sweep the empty floor, shoulder hunched to his ears. “Okay fine, just do it.”

You nod and turn back to the monitor. “We’ll just pick up where you left off, okay?”

“Oh. I didn’t—”

Bennet Brook’s voice cuts him off, filtering through Keys’ computer speakers with that deep, raspy voice of his. 

“—was pretty good. Okay, now let’s do the carpal bones. I have a mnemonic for this, actually, you want to hear it? Okay. Some Lovers Try Positions That They Can’t Handle. Yeah, it’s a little…suggestive? It just—it helps people remember okay? Yes! The sluttier the better. Look, it goes from thumb to pinky proximally, then pinky to thumb distally. Here, I’ll show you…”

You risk a glance over at Keys. He sits perfectly still, breath bated as Bennett leads the listener through the scene. 

“Now you’re getting distracted,” Bennet laughs breathlessly. “What positions do I—I’m trying to help you study. Oh my god, you’re so annoying. Look. If I answer, will you study? Yeah? Okay, fine. My favorite is—”

You reach forward and press pause. The silence in the office rushes in to fill the empty space, and your stomach swoops as you turn to Keys. 

“What’s your favorite sex position?” you ask abruptly. 

He looks at you, eyes wide. You don’t miss the way his knuckles whiten around his arm rest, clearly doing that thing where he resists the urge to push his glasses up again out of habit.

“What does this have to do with—”

You sigh. “Just trust me, and answer the question.”

“Uh…missionary?”

“God, okay.” You roll your eyes and reach over to hit resume again. “That’s such a lie, but whatever.”

Keys stops you with that hand on your wrist again. “Wha—lie?”

“Yes. Lie.”

He finally turns to face you, incredulous. “Oh, and you’re suddenly an expert on what I like in bed?”

Heat shoots down your spine at his words, but you just scoff. “You play as a fucking stripper cop in Free City. Now, tell me the real answer.”

After a moment Keys groans, then looks away. “I don’t know the word for it. Like, the name, or whatever.”

“Oh! That’s not a problem.” 

You reach for his keyboard, and before he knows what’s happening, you’re opening a new tab, and then, right in front of him, is a list of sex positions. 

With pictures. 

“Jesus!” He hisses, looking over his shoulder as if the wall behind you is somehow going to open up and reveal your boss or something. “I’m going to have to scrub my search history clean after this.”

“Relax,” you say, settling back in your chair. “Now, point.”

Keys lets out a heavy, resigned sigh and sits forward, squinting at the screen. Ten seconds later, he shakes his head. 

“It’s not there.”

When he looks over at you, he immediately rolls his eyes, because the look on your face is the clearest I-told-you-so look he’s ever received. 

“God, with how freaky you are, Keys, it’s a wonder you’re silent in bed—”

“Hey!” He interjects, glaring over at you. “I never said—woah, okay, why are you standing up? What are you doing?”

You plant hands on your hips, looking down at him. “Look, just maneuver me into whatever position it is, and I’ll find the name of it for you.”

“This is ridiculous.”

You huff. “This is a part of the research. If you don’t want my help, that’s fine, we—”

Without looking, he reaches out and grabs your waist. The warmth of his skin bleeds through your thin work shirt and a surprised squeak escapes you as he tugs you down.

You land in his lap with an undignified plop, facing him. Your stomach plummets as his knee presses against your core, but he makes a disgruntled sound, and grabs your thigh, pulling one leg up and over until you’re straddling him. 

Your pulse hammers in your ears as you steady yourself with your hands on his shoulders and peer down at him. 

The dim blue glow of the computer reflects in his glasses and as his gaze meets yours, his expression makes your chest ache. There’s something so sweet there. Soft. Like flower petals against your skin. Fragile, too. 

“This is it?” you whisper.

A small smirk crosses his lips. 

“Okay, so, this is just straddling…” you say, but your voice trails off as his hands spread over your waist. They’re so big. How have you never noticed how big his hands were before?

You swallow hard. “Or, I think, it’s technically called seated cowgirl.”

“Really?” he asks, squinting up at you with a hint of cockiness you could get drunk on.

In your next breath, Keys’s fingers dig into your hips, and he spins you around on his lap. His chest is warm against your back, and his computer desk digs into your belly. You wiggle your hips back slightly to get away from the sharp edge, but still when his hard length presses into your clothed core. 

“What’s this one called?” He asks. His voice is deeper now, threaded with heat, and it makes your hands clench against the cool metal of his desk. 

“Reverse seated cowgirl,” you say, fighting to keep your tone even. “So, this is your favorite? Tell me why.”

His breath stalls in his chest, you can feel the way he hesitates against your spine.

The printer hums in the far corner of the office, and a car horn blares distantly from the street below. 

After a long moment, he exhales, and his breath ghosts over your ear, making your lashes flutter. 

“I like the view,” he admits softly. “Painted in blue-light, all needy—” Then, he lets out a quiet, “Fuck.”

Heat pools deep in your belly. He sounds…wrecked. Already. And you’re just sitting in his lap fully clothed. 

God, you could make this man beg. 

You tilt forward and look over your shoulder. His eyes lift to yours, then drag down to your mouth, your hips, and his bottom lip disappears between his teeth.

“What else?” you whisper.  

He doesn’t hesitate this time. “I like the control of it, you know? Like—” he huffs out a quiet laugh, like he can’t believe he’s saying these things. “Like maybe I’m just playing a video game, and making you keep my cock warm. And you just… just have to sit there and take it.”

His words—so filthy and shy—stir hot embers of arousal between your hips. 

“Shit, Keys,” you say with a breathless laugh. “That was so good!”

His eyes meet yours again. “Really?”

“Yeah. Okay, I’m pushing play again. I’ll skip forward a little, too, just so we get to the good stuff.”

He clears his throat. “You’re going to stay right here?” He taps your leg and his fingers linger on your skin. 

You pretend to jolt in his hold. “Oh! Sorry, I can move if you—”

“No, no,” he shakes his head. “It’s fine.” 

‘It’s fine’, he says, as if he’s not raging hard underneath you, holding onto your leg like he might die if you slid off him right now. 

He’s too easy. 

You press play. 

Immediately, sounds of kissing and rustling fill the room. Keys inhales sharply, his erection growing against your ass, and you barely resist the urge to grind down on him. 

“That’s it,” Bennet croons. “You take it so good for me, baby. Fuck, you’re incredible.”

The wet sound of hips meeting has Keys’ mouth dropping open. His eyes dart off the screen, like watching the loading bar is somehow equivalent to seeing these imaginary people fuck. 

“That’s praise,” you whisper over your shoulder. “Obviously.”

Keys looks at you, then. Really looks at you. You can feel the way he takes in the slight shift of your hips as you try to find some friction to release the building ache. 

He’s reading you. Analyzing the data. Recalculating.

Classic Keys. 

The sight pulls at something in your chest. Truthfully, that’s the reason you like him so damn much, the reason you’re pulled to him like a ship to a lighthouse. 

Because with Keys, you would be fully, and utterly known. 

“…always so needy?” Bennet groans. “Just wanna be bent over a desk and fucked, huh, baby? This what you need? So dirty, I swear to God.”

“Degradation,” you murmur, turning back to the computer. 

Bennett keeps going. “Oh yeah, just like that? C’mon, baby. Tell me what you want. Use your words.”

 “Instruction,” Keys says, beating you to the punch. 

You’re grateful your back is to him so he can’t see your self-indulgent smile. 

“…thought about this a lot,” Bennet groans, the sound effects growing faster and louder. “Like in the library on campus? When we’re trying to study but you’re sitting across from me, and I can’t focus…”

Your breath catches at the exact same second Keys goes still beneath you. 

“…I see it, you know. The way your hand brushes mine when you hand me a pencil. You think I don’t notice? Fuck—of course I’ve thought about you. Are you kidding? Every time I jerk my cock I think about you. How you’d sound when I’m fucking up into you like this. Oh, you like that, huh? Get you so cock drunk— oh, baby, that’s it—”

You swallow hard, mouth suddenly gone dry. 

That’s fantasizing.

But for some reason, you can’t even bring yourself to repeat it. To solidify it. To make it any realer than it already is. 

Can Keys tell how much you relate to Bennett's words? That every time you’re in bed at night, thoughts of him keep you up late, you’re rubbing your aching cunt, whining his name into the empty ceiling?

You’re soaking through your underwear now, but mostly from listening to Keys’ uneven breathing behind you. His fingers flex over and over against your work skirt, like he can’t quite get up the courage to slip them under the hem that’s riding up your bare thighs. 

In an effort to relieve his aching erection, Keys shifts in his chair. It’s a small enough movement, but it’s just enough to send his elbow into a cup on his desk. It falls with a dull thud, the water inside instantly soaking into the carpet.

You smack the space bar on his keyboard, cutting Bennet off mid-moan, and leap to your feet. 

Keys cringes and moves to stand, but you disappear behind your desk before he can blink, and reappear a second later with a roll of paper towels. 

“Here,” you say gently as you kneel in front of him. “Let me.”

Keys reaches down at the same time you raise up on your knees, and when you lift your chin, you find your faces only an inch apart. 

He doesn’t jerk back like you expect. Instead, he just finds the paper towel on the ground and gently pries your fingers off it, resuming the blotting himself. 

Your hands find purchase on his knees for balance, and they spread wider under your touch, almost subconsciously. 

Almost. 

You swallow. “Keys?” 

His shoulder muscles flex under his T-shirt as he works. “Yeah?”

“Do you want to keep listening to the audio…or…do you want to practice?”

“Practice?” He doesn’t look up, but his voice cracks. 

“Only if you want.”

Keys sits back into his chair, tossing the wet paper towel into the nearby waste basket. Then his eyes settle on you for what feels like the first time all night. 

Through his work khakis’, his erection presses an angry imprint. God, it looks so hard it probably hurts, confined like that. The air between you shimmers with that unsaid tension, the kind that releases butterflies in your stomach and in the chambers of your heart. 

But while exciting, it’s equally terrifying, putting yourself on display like this. You feel strangely vulnerable, even though you were just teasing him a few seconds earlier. 

“What are you thinking about right now?” you ask, voice soft. 

Keys looks away, jaw clenching. 

Suddenly, you wonder if you’ve misread this. Have you made him uncomfortable? What if there actually is a girl, and it’s not you, and you’ve just—

“Your mouth,” Keys says, cutting off your thoughts. 

Hope renewed, your gaze snaps to his. 

“Where?” 

He rakes a hand through his hair, and his glasses slant adorably on his nose with the motion. His chest rises and falls once, twice, and then he whispers, “My cock.”

God, just hearing him say that makes your panties slick. 

“Good,” you breathe. “Now, put it together.”

He huffs, a surprised laugh slipping from him before the heat returns to his gaze.  “I’m thinking about your mouth on my cock.”

The damp carpet fibers dig into your knees as you watch his Adam’s apple bob on a swallow.

“Do you want me to do that?” you ask carefully. 

There’s a certain irreversible tension sitting between you right now. It feels a little like waiting behind an ancient door, not sure if it will creak open and invite you in or vanish into a cloud of dust. 

After a long moment, Keys nods.

A triumphant thrill zips through you, but you keep yourself together and hold his gaze. “You have to say it—”

“Fuck, I want it.” The words rush out of him in a gasp, like they’ve been sitting behind his teeth, waiting their turn the whole night. “I want my cock in your mouth. Please.”

He’s barely got the words out before your fingers fly to his zipper. 

“Forgot about begging,” you mutter more to yourself, but he hears you anyway. 

How could you have forgotten that very important category of dirty talk? It’s one of your favorites, and it flew from his lips unprompted. 

He’s perfect. 

“W-what about the—cameras,” he protests weakly, even as his hips lift from the chair to help you slide his pants down his thighs. 

“The cameras don’t reach back here,” you assure him.

Hooking a finger in the band his underwear, you pull them down and reveal his cock. It sits hard and heavy against the happy trail on his lower stomach.

He sputters. “W-what? Wait—really? How do you know that?”

It’s only natural, digging into dark spots in the security systems at a new job. Especially when you have a coworker as hot as Walter McKeys.

Instead of answering, though, you shuffle forward and take him in your hands. His head tips back on a ragged groan and you relish the hot, velvety feel of him. It’s long and hard, and somehow, you always knew Keys would have a big dick. 

It’s always the nerds. 

Your pussy throbs, fluttering around nothing as you imagine him easing his length inside your slick core, whispering in your ear, telling you how well you’re doing, how much he’s wanted this. 

Keys sits ramrod straight, breathing sharply through his nose as you let your hands explore him. You stroke him from base to tip, fondle his balls, then reach down and palm his thighs. His stomach flexes beneath his shirt, and on impulse, you reach up and lift it until the fabric bunches just below his ribs. 

Soft tummy with muscles flexing underneath. A dark happy trail leading down. A glimpse of thicker hair littered across his chest. 

God, he’s delicious. 

What you wouldn’t give to have this man naked in your bed right now. Saliva builds in your mouth at the thought.

Can you die by horniness? Better research that later. 

You stroke him firmly a few times, and when you lean down, he groans softly.  

Glancing up, you search for any sign to stop, but his eyes aren’t on yours anymore.  They’re glued to your chest. 

You tilt your chin down to see what he’s looking at. 

The three unfastened buttons of your work shirt give him a clear view of your cleavage, and the glow of the computer monitor illuminates the dips and valleys prettily.

A relieved gasp escapes his chest as your hands start undoing the rest of the buttons. He nods as if you read his mind when your shirt falls open, revealing your black bra. 

Thank God it’s your cute one. Not lingerie by any means, but your nipples harden under his gaze, poking against the fabric. 

You keep your shirt hanging loosely over your shoulders, just in case someone were to walk in. Although very unlikely, the thought of getting caught with Keys still shoots a wicked jolt of pleasure through you. 

Wordlessly, you run your hands up his legs again until your fingers find his cock and resume your attention. 

Keys says something—more like whines it—but it’s too quiet for you to hear. The carpet presses into your knees as you lean in. His thick thighs bracket your shoulders, and when your breath ghosts across the head of his cock, they go hard as rocks. He makes a muffled sound in the back of his throat, then clears it roughly. 

You lean back to catch his eye. 

“Whatever your voice, or breath, wants to do…just let it happen,” you say. “Don’t worry about being loud, there’s no one here.”

He nods, drunk on the sight of you, desperate for your mouth. 

When those big hands reach down and gather your hair, you tilt your head back with a whimper. 

You scoot even closer, close enough to tap his dick against your lips with a soft smack. When you blink up at him, Keys curses under his breath, then stops himself. 

“Stop swallowing it down,” you chide. “Let me hear.”

Before he can say—or do—anything, you lick a broad, wet stripe up his length. His hips jerk in your hold, a ragged moan tumbling from his lips, unabashed. Your eyes shine with pride when you look up at him. And fuck, he’ll do anything to see that look again. 

You stroke him lazily. Like you have all the the time in the world here in the office after hours. Like you’ve been thinking about it for a long, long, time. 

Drool pools in your mouth as you coat him with your tongue. Then, your lips wrap around him and you slowly work your way down, inch by inch, listening to his whimpers, feeling the way his body vibrates underneath you. 

He’s still holding himself back, so you draw back up and suck gently on his tip before popping off him.

“Sorry,” he gasps. “Fu-forgot I was supposed to talk.”

You nod. “That’s okay. How do you like it?”

He starts to respond, but you envelop him in your warm, wet mouth again, and all words die on his lips. 

“Feels so good, I can’t—can’t—mmmph,” he groans as you relax your jaw and take him deeper, then whimpers pitifully when you come off him again. “My brain’s fried. Like, actually short circuited. I can’t think—”

You press your tits together and tilt your head. “It feels good, right?”

He chuckles, a ragged soft sound. “Fuck—yeah.”

“Just talk to me, then,” you murmur, fluttering your tongue along the ridge of his cock as it twitches in your hold. 

Something seems to click in his mind at those words, and his eyes harden as he stares down at you.

“You want to know why I’m always so tired?” he says, chest heaving. “I stay up all night, trying to get the work done I should be doing when I’m sitting at my desk. But I can’t. Because I’m—fucking hard—all the damn time. Because of you!”

You decide to reward him for that little speech—a great example of fantasizing and degradation—and relax your jaw again, sliding him deep into your throat. Deeper than before. Keys throws his head back on a groan. The stretch brings tears to your eyes, but you blink them back so you can look at him properly. 

His hair looks so pretty illuminated in soft streaks of blue from the computer, and gold from the street far below. Like a painting. 

Arousal floods your core, coating your underwear, and you can feel your clit pulsing in time with your heartbeat. 

You slide up and off of him to breathe and he inhales with you, like that took his breath away as much as it did yours. 

“Can’t stop thinking about what you’d feel like under me,” Keys pants. He watches you with heated eyes as you suck on his tip, stroking the rest of him steadily with both hands. “Or—or on top of me. What you’d t-taste like.”

Without thinking, you shove two fingers past your waistband, and straight through your soaked folds. The contact has you moaning around his cock, sending a sharp jolt of pleasure down his spine. 

Then, you slowly withdraw them. They glisten in the glow of the monitor as you raise them up to his face, and Keys wastes no time leaning forward and capturing them in his mouth. His tongue strokes up to your knuckles eagerly, and as the first taste of you floods his mouth, it seems to unlock something in him. Some rusty, spider-web filled, creaking lock shoves open. 

“Aghhh yeah,” he moans when you withdraw your fingers and suck him deep again. “That’s how I like it. However you do it, that’s how I like it, baby. Holy fuck.” 

Your eyes actually roll back at that, and your hand flies down to circle your clit without thinking. 

His eyes track the movement and he chuckles darkly. “Oh, you like that? You like hearing how well you’re doing?”

You whimper. Fuck, yeah, you do.

He bucks underneath you, like your mouth is just the best thing he’s ever felt in his life. “Just—fucking—on your knees for me? Shit."

Your eyes slide shut, lost in the salty taste of him as his precum mixes with your spit. His hand leaves your head and reaches down to tap your chin. 

“Eyes on me, baby,” he rasps. Your eyes flutter open in surprise. “Good girl.”

You swallow around him in response and his jaw drops. He grips your hair again on instinct and you moan in encouragement as he starts to push you gently up and down his shaft. 

“Is t-this okay?” he asks, breath ragged. 

You nod, lashes fluttering as he hits that soft spot at the back of your throat. 

Truth is, you love this. 

Taking your rigid, calculating co-worker and turning him into something needy and honest. He’s wild, but with an edge of control. And somehow, you just know Keys could take you to the brink and keep you there like no other. 

You hollow your cheeks as he grinds in and out of your wet mouth, pulsing against your tongue and spitting out the filthiest words you’ve ever heard him say in your months of working across from him. 

You rub your throbbing clit faster, and he blinks down, watching you touch yourself to the feel of him in your mouth for all of three seconds before he’s yanking up on your hair. 

Your scalp tingles as you disobey his silent order, determined to have him spilling in your mouth. His base is slick against your puffy lips, and he damn near chokes on his tongue when your nose hits his stomach. 

“Holy—I’m gonna come,” he grunts, hips bucking. “Shit—baby, you’ve gotta—do you—”

He breaks off with a ragged moan as you grip his thighs and swallow around him—and then he’s spilling down your throat. 

His abs tense and release over and over in your view, and the view is so intoxicating, you’re only a few seconds away from your own release when he finally slips from your drooling mouth.

You don’t know what you expected him to do when he finished. Maybe probably crawl back into that shy, nice-guy, missionary shell of his. Instead, when his chin falls to his chest, his soft brown eyes have gone molten. He reaches down and pulls his pants back up, tucking himself back into his briefs, but he doesn’t bother with the zipper. 

“C’mere,” he demands, grabbing you by the wrist and yanking you up. Your legs wobble, but he catches you easily and pulls you down into his lap. “Ride my thigh.”

Your mouth drops open. “Ride your—”

“You heard me.”

In one smooth motion, he plunges a hand under your skirt and yanks your panties down your legs. His knuckles brush your wet folds and you gasp against him, grinding down instinctively against his knee. 

“Look at you,” he whispers. “Taking instructions. Soaking through my pants like that? Fuck yeah.”

Your breasts heave as you try to catch your breath, but now, you start to wonder if maybe you’ll just be in an oxygen debt forever at this point. Because with the way he’s looking up at you right now, there’s no way you can breathe. 

Your hips roll smooth and fast, and when he shifts his leg up slightly, meeting your movements, sparks shoot up your spine. Your head drops back, eyes slipping shut, but Keys is quick to pull your gaze back to his with a hand around the nape of your neck. 

He clicks his tongue. “No, I want to watch you. Wanna see you fall apart for me.”

“God, Keys,” you pant, “you’re a quick learner, I’ll give you that—”

He cuts you off by pinching your nipple through your bra, and when he grabs a handful of your bare ass under your skirt, your lungs officially forget how to expand. 

“Please,” you beg. “Keys—”

His hands fly to your hips, helping you rock back and forth on him. “What is it? What do you need? Need me to touch you?”

You whimper. “Yes.”

“Tell me where.”

You grab his hand and guide it under your skirt, but he pulls back at the last second. 

“That’s not telling me.”

“Oh, fuck you,” you laugh, breathless and irritated. 

He smiles, then. And it’s positively radiant, white teeth winking in the dim light. 

“C’mon, use your words, or else I’ll have to stop,” he warns. 

But you’re not listening, because at that moment, he dips his head and captures your aching breast in his mouth, pulling a deep moan from your throat and putting an arch in your back. 

Your thighs burn, hips slowing to devastatingly desperate swivel in order to keep his mouth on you. The threads of his pants are warm and completely soaked through underneath you, and he’s licking and sucking your breasts like he’s trying to find a way to imprint his smell, his taste, onto your body.

The duel stimulation feeds that sprawling drive for more. Tremors start to run through your hands, making them claw restlessly at his shoulders and dive into his hair as your orgasm grows closer. 

Suddenly, Keys pulls back. He ignores your whine of protest and blinks up at you from behind his glasses. Your tongue darts over your bottom lip as your eyes drop to his mouth. 

His perfect…perfect fucking mouth. Soft lips, parted just slightly as he breathes heavily beneath you. The timber of his voice reverberates against your stomach as he talks. God, it’d be so easy just to lean in and press your mouth against his, feel that gentle glide of his tongue against yours…

Wait, is he saying something? You can’t fucking think—

“…not going to tell me, I have to stop.”

It’s only when his hands leave your body that the world slows to a stop. 

Cold air rushes in where his hands just were. Now you’re just needy and wet, grinding down on his pants leg in the middle of a dark office. 

“W-what?” you ask dumbly.

He shrugs. “I told you what would happen if you didn’t use your words.”

Your brain feels foggy, like your thoughts are traveling through a cloud, all the blooding your body pooled in your clit instead. 

“But I...” you whimper, “But, what—”

He rolls his eyes. 

“But I—but Keys—I just—” he mocks you, voice going higher on his register, and your mouth drops open in shock. 

He smirks at the look on your face and tucks a stray piece of hair behind your ear. “What? you thought I wasn’t serious? You made me do all this—and don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it. I watched you getting off on the power trip of it all, and now it’s my turn. So, go ahead. Tell me what you want me to do to you."

Where the fuck did your nerdy, shy coworker go? And who have you turned him into? Your breasts heave in his face as you blink down at him, but he doesn’t so much as glance at them. 

“I’m right here,” he urges. “Go ahead. Ask for it. Anything you want, I’ll give it to you.”

After a moment, you finally find your voice. 

“I-I want you to touch me.”

His hands instantly resume their place on your hips and your breath shutters in relief. 

Then he leans in, lips ghosting over your jaw. “That wasn’t so hard, huh? Where do you want to come? On my fingers?”

“Yes!” The word leaves your mouth broken and desperate. 

He hums. “Put it together.”

You exhale sharply, panting towards the ceiling in frustration. “Walter, I want you to finger fuck me until I come.”

He smiles against your throat. “Good girl.”

His hand finds your clit immediately and he rubs tight, hot circles that have your back arching.  

“Oh, God, don’t stop!” you beg. 

Your shirt slips from your shoulder and then his mouth is there, kissing the soft skin like he’s trying to memorize the shape of it. 

The muscles deep in your core flex with your impending pleasure and you writhe against him desperately. Through it all, his hands stay steady, never wavering. Constant, and grounding. 

You raise up on shaky legs as his two middle fingers circle your entrance and your pelvis tilts, eagerly seeking that internal friction. 

He presses in, just a little, and your body welcomes him greedily. The sound of his fingers disappearing inside you making him groan out a slurred curse. 

“Shit, baby—both at once? So wet for me, oh my God.” 

When his fingertips brush that spongey spot that makes you see stars, your chest vibrates with your moan. The pressure on your clit is too much, and not enough, and everything all at once—it’s overwhelming. It's perfect. 

Your hips snap into his palm, driving his fingers deeper and he lets out a choked sound as you whine, needy and breathless. 

“There you go. That’s it,” he murmurs into your neck. His glasses knock into your throat as you tip your head back to give him better access. “Take what you need.”

That white-hot band of pleasure finally snaps as you clench around his fingers, and your orgasm rushes through you in a torrential wave of bliss. Keys helps bring you down with soft kisses to your chest, thumbs tracing circles into your thighs as you collapse on top of him. 

“Holy shit,” you gasp, running a hand through your hair, gazing down at him through heavy lids. “That was…”

“Good?” he asks eagerly. 

You smile. “Perfect.”

And you mean it. You really do. 

His fingers brush over your bare shoulder and your breath catches again as your eyes connect with his. The stoplight on the street below turns green, reflecting in his glasses, and because you can’t help it, you smirk down at him. 

“So, about this girl...” he murmurs. 

Your stomach flips. “Yeah?”

“This date—”

“Yeah?” you say again, eagerly, cutting him off. 

As you stare at each other, chests heaving, faces flush, a laugh builds behind your ribs. 

He clears his throat. “I was kinda hoping…you’re free Thursday? I was thinking about that place on Elm and Cross—”

“Fuckin’ knew it,” you murmur, and the rest of his words die against your mouth as you lean down and kiss him. 

a/n: Oh, hi. So, the way I feel about this fictional man, is actually pretty close to the actual definition of feral. Also, I just want to say, there are many more kinds of dirty talk out there, but these categories just fit the plot lol

Also everyone blame Jules (@tellcherhesgone) for putting this idea in my head, because she posted one thing about Keys definitely knowing what GoneWildAudio is, and that shit stuck with me lol

keys taglist: @emotionallyaslut , @subtlesposts, @oliviaharrington, @drifting-daydream, @dracomalfoypilled , @mysticfluffyness

Because Steve never hesitates.

Never acts like affection is something shameful.

Love pours out of him, as naturally as body heat.

If your hands are cold, he interrupts himself halfway through a story just to catch your fingers and tuck them into his jacket pockets alongside his own, rubbing warmth back into your knuckles while continuing his sentence without missing a beat.

If you yawn during movie night, his arm is around your shoulders before the sound can finish leaving your mouth. “C’mere, sleepy girl,” he murmurs automatically, pulling you sideways against his chest.

If your shoelaces come untied in the middle of the sidewalk, he drops immediately to one knee with a distracted, “hang on, baby.”

Rainwater hisses along the curb while he reties the bow tighter this time, fingers quick and practiced, one hand steadying lightly against your ankle. His knuckles brush your skin through your sock and you have to stand there, holding your breath until your lungs ache with it, staring down at the concentration pulling his brows together.

Wondering what it must be like to love someone with your whole heart and not feel like it’s going to break you open.

He’s warm everywhere, your Steve. Warm hands, warm mouth. Warm stomach pressed against your back beneath blankets. He smells like laundry detergent and faint cedar cologne rubbed into the collar of his jackets. Sometimes vanilla chapstick, sometimes mint gum. Always Steve.

And the kisses are constant too.

Quick, thoughtless ones, born entirely from fondness.

The corner of your mouth while waiting for the microwave to beep. Your forehead when he passes behind you in the kitchen. Your shoulder while you lean over the sink brushing your teeth side by side. The back of your neck when he reaches around you for orange juice in the fridge, mumbling a sleepy, “morning, honey,” against your skin before kissing beneath your hairline.

Sometimes he just looks at you for a second. Expression softening imperceptibly, like some private thought crossed his mind, and then he leans over and kisses your cheek with this quiet little hum in his throat.

Like loving you tastes good.

And god, the neck kissing.

It’s terrible.

And right now, in the middle of a museum gallery so quiet you can hear shoes squeak against polished floors, he’s doing it again.

You’re trying to read the plaque beneath some enormous renaissance painting—something about divinity and grief, oil on canvas—but Steve is behind you, arms folded around your waist while he scans the museum brochure one-handed.

One of his hands has slipped beneath your cardigan, warm palm spread low across your stomach.

“Okay, so,” he murmurs near your ear, voice low enough that the sound vibrates through you, “there’s the Greek sculpture thing upstairs, or... there’s apparently a room with these like, tiny dollhouses?”

You wrinkle your nose. “That sounds horrifying.”

“Right?” His lips brush the shell of your ear as he speaks. “Like what if one of them’s haunted?”

Then his mouth finds the hinge of your jaw.

One lazy, distracted kiss.

His lips are soft, slightly chapped from the cold outside. Warm breath spills across your skin afterward, making your pulse jump beneath his mouth. He lingers there, nose nudging lightly against your neck while he keeps mumbling off different sections of the museum.

You feel the shape of his smile against your skin when he finds another ridiculous exhibit.

“Apparently there’s a room that’s just chairs.”

“That can’t be true.”

“No, I swear to god.”

Then his mouth drifts lower.

Open-mouthed kisses this time.

Slow enough that warmth blooms beneath every press of his lips. You feel the faint scrape of his teeth catch your skin playfully before he smooths over it with another softer kiss, his thumb stroking across your stomach.

Your entire body tightens around the feeling.

The worst part is knowing that he isn’t trying to fluster you.

Steve isn’t performing intimacy.

He just never second-guesses affection.

Unlike you.

For you, every touch feels catastrophic.

The second Steve touches you, awareness crashes through your body all at once—your pulse, your breathing, the weight of his hand, whether your hair smells okay, whether your stomach feels too soft beneath his palm, whether someone across the gallery can see this.

Whether you deserve to be loved this openly at all.

“....and Robin said there’s some painting of a guy eating his own son which honestly seems kinda—”

He stops, hand stilling against your stomach.

“Babe?”

You blink hard, staring at the plaque without reading a single word.

Steve leans back, concern creasing immediately between his brows.

“Hey,” his hand slides higher, rubbing gently over your ribs. “You okay?”

“Hm? Mhm.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Another lie.

Your skin still burns where he kissed you.

And underneath all the panic is something worse.

Fear and hunger, knotted so tightly you can’t separate them anymore.

Wanting him closer, wanting him to keep touching you forever. Wanting to crawl inside every warm, gentle thing he gives you and stay there.

Not knowing what you’d do if he ever stopped.

Because as terrifying as it is to be loved this softly, you think losing it might actually destroy you.

“You wanna sit down for a sec?” Steve asks quietly. “I think I still have that granola bar in my bag if you’re hungry.”

You almost laugh, because of course that’s where his mind goes.  

Care.

Always care.

“No, I’m okay,” you say quickly, forcing a smile. “We can keep going. The uh, Greek sculpture thing sounds good.”

He watches you for a beat longer than comfortable, thumb rubbing against your hipbone through your jeans.

“Okay,” he says finally.

His hand slides up your arm, gently fixing the cardigan slipping off your shoulder. His fingers brush your neck in the process, absentmindedly smoothing your hair back into place too.

And then, because he’s Steve—because affection lives inside him so naturally he doesn’t know how to love except with his whole body—

He reaches down and interlaces your fingers with his.

Warmth immediately fills the spaces between your knuckles, his callused fingers curling around yours with steady, secure pressure.

He keeps holding your hand the entire walk toward the staircase, thumb stroking across your skin while he talks about haunted dollhouses and ugly marble babies and whether you think ancient Greek people had chest hair.

And isn’t it terrifying, how quickly your body has learned what safety feels like in someone else’s hands?

...

It isn’t just the touching.

You almost wish it was.

Because that would be easier to understand.

A touch can be explained away:

Steve’s just naturally affectionate. Steve likes physical contact.  

But it’s not just that.

It’s the way he loves you without condition. Without making you earn it first.

A few weeks into dating, he showed up at your apartment carrying a bouquet so enormous it nearly blocked his entire face.

When you opened the door, all you could see were flowers.

Soft cream roses crowded against pale pink delphiniums, petals curling delicately at the edges like silk ribbon. Deep burgundy dahlias bloomed low in the arrangement, velvety and dark as spilled wine, white baby’s breath drifting between everything like tiny bursts of snowfall.

And hidden right in the middle were your favorites.

Blue hydrangeas.

Dusty-blue petals clustered together like storm clouds at dusk, edges fading lavender where the light caught them.  

You had pointed them out exactly once while passing a florist downtown.

Three seconds, maybe.  

You remembered slowing briefly in front of the shop window because they looked beautiful beneath the warm yellow display lights. Rain had just started misting softly against the sidewalk and Steve had been halfway through ranting about some middle schooler trying to rent an R-rated horror movie with a fake ID. You’d smiled at his story before murmuring, almost absentmindedly, “Those are so pretty.”

That was it.

You hadn’t even thought he heard you.

But Steve Harrington has a habit of holding onto the tiniest details about you like they're something precious.

“Baby, I swear to god,” Steve was saying now as he stepped inside your apartment, nudging the door shut with his foot, “I had the craziest day today. This guy at work tried to return a tape completely melted.”

The bouquet landed in your arms before he shrugged off his jacket.

“Melted,” he repeated, horrified, running a hand through his hair. “Like, fully warped. Looked like somebody cooked that thing in a microwave.”

You stared down at the flowers.

The bouquet was heavy enough that you had to support it with both arms. Thick stems pressed cool and damp against your palms beneath layers of cream florist paper, the wrapping folded slightly unevenly around the flowers and tied together with rough twine that looked suspiciously hand-done.

Not florist-perfect, but Steve-perfect.

The flowers smelled dizzyingly alive: sweet rose perfume softened by rainwater and the cool, earthy scent of freshly cut stems.

“…um, Steve?”

“—and Keith asked me if I did that,” he huffed, toeing off his shoes. “I mean, can you believe that shit? What does he think I do at work all day, destroy tapes for fun?”

“Steve.”

“Yeah?”

You blinked at him slowly.

“What’s…” Your throat tightened strangely around the words. “What’s this for?”

He looked down at the bouquet like he’d genuinely forgotten he walked in carrying it.

“Uh…” His brows lifted slightly. “Flowers?”

He laughed softly after saying it, confused.

But you didn’t laugh.

Because your brain was already doing what it always did: rummaging frantically for conditions. For expectations and hidden meanings tucked beneath kindness.

Your heartbeat started creeping unpleasantly high in your throat.

Was it an anniversary?

Oh god.

Had you forgotten something?

Your stomach dropped, dates scrambling uselessly through your head too fast to follow. One month? Six weeks? Was there something couples were supposed to celebrate this early? Had Steve done something thoughtful and now you were standing there empty-handed like the worst girlfriend alive?

The cellophane crackled beneath your tightening grip.

“Did I…” You cleared your throat quietly. “Did I forget something?”

Steve’s forehead wrinkled.

“Huh?”

“The flowers.”

“What about ‘em?”

Your voice came out impossibly small. “Why’d you get these?”

“Uh, ‘cause I…” He huffed a tiny laugh through his nose, head tilting. “’Cause I wanted to?”

His confusion only made your chest tighten more.

“Is it our anniversary or something?”

His frown deepened. “What? No.”

“Then… why?”

Steve stared at you for a second, slightly open-mouthed now, the soft amusement on his face fading into gentle concern.

“Baby, they’re just flowers.”

You stared back helplessly.

“But why?” you asked again, quieter this time.

“Well, I…” He shrugged one shoulder slightly. “I saw them. And I thought about you.”

The apartment suddenly felt very quiet.

You looked back down at the bouquet in your arms.

The hydrangeas were even prettier up close, petals shifting between pale blue and soft lavender depending on how the light hit them. Tiny sprays of baby’s breath caught between larger blooms like stars scattered through clouds.

A single sunflower tucked near the back, drooping sideways because Steve probably had the bouquet strapped into the passenger's seat on the drive over.

Your throat burned.

“That’s it?” you asked quietly.

Steve let out a soft breath through his nose.

His socked feet whispered against the floor as he stepped closer, one hand rising to cup your cheek.

Big enough to hold the entire side of your face, his palm enveloped you in warmth. Your lashes fluttered at the feeling of his thumb sweeping beneath your eye, brushing over the apple of your cheek, soothing something there without even knowing what hurt.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “That’s it. I saw ’em and thought you’d like them.” His mouth tugged into a small smile. “You stared at those flowers for like, ten minutes.”  

You huffed weakly. “It was not ten minutes.”

Steve’s smile widened, encouraged by the sound of your laugh.

“There was this whole wrapping station thing too,” he added, gesturing proudly toward the bouquet still overflowing from your arms. The cream paper rustled softly as he touched it, uneven folds bunching around the stems where the twine had already started slipping loose on one side. “The lady kept trying to help me but I told her I could handle it.”

He tipped his head, inspecting his own work. “Pretty good, right?”

You looked down again.

The wrapping really was crooked. One corner folded inward strangely while another flared too wide, baby’s breath poking free through gaps in the paper.  

It couldn’t have been more beautiful.

Steve’s grin turned sheepish, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. “Honestly, I think she stopped helping 'cause I was stressing her out.”

A quiet bubble of laughter escaped you, and the second it did, you noticed the way his face changed. Grin softening, eyes gone warm at the realization that he’d made you smile.  

That was the other unbearable thing about him.

How carefully he watches for your joy, waiting for the next chance to do it again.   

He really had done all this just because he wanted to.

No special occasions—he just saw something beautiful and immediately thought of you.

You blinked quickly, staring down at the velvety rose petals before he could notice the dangerous sting gathering behind your eyes.

Nobody had ever remembered little things about you before.

Not enough to act on them later.

Certainly not enough to drive across town carrying an absurdly oversized bouquet because of one passing comment you barely remembered making yourself.  

But Steve noticed everything.

The tea you always reach for when you’re sick. The songs you hum in the car without realizing. Which side of the bed you like to sleep on. Which sweatshirt you wear when you’re sad. The way you peel pepperoni slices off pizza before eating.  

The flowers you paused to admire for three seconds on a rainy sidewalk weeks ago.

Your fingers tightened carefully around the bouquet.

“Thank you,” you managed quietly.  

Steve smiled, stepping closer until the bouquet crushed lightly between your bodies, cellophane crinkling in the quiet of the apartment.

“Yeah. Anytime, baby,” he hummed, bending down to press his smile into the curve of your mouth, as natural as breathing.

...

You don’t know why you get like this.

Why your body reacts like it’s bracing for impact when all he’s doing is being gentle. Why his affection makes your chest ache the way it does.

Why your first instinct is always to freeze.

Body going stiff whenever Steve wraps himself around your back in grocery store checkout lines, chin hooked over your shoulder while he complains about magazine prices and rubs his thumb beneath the hem of your shirt.

Sometimes he brushes your hair behind your ear mid-conversation and keeps talking without even realizing he did it. Sometimes he reaches for your hand in his sleep, eyes still closed, finding you beneath the blankets when his body notices your absence before he does.

And you wonder why, in all those sweet, wonderful moments—when he kisses your forehead while waiting for the microwave to beep, when he pulls you against his chest during movies, when he drops to his knees on dirty pavement because he doesn't want you to trip over your laces, when he holds your face in both hands like it’s something precious—you feel this horrible urge to apologize afterward.

Sorry I’m difficult. Sorry you picked me. Sorry you don’t realize yet there are easier people to love.

Love had always arrived transactional before him.

Conditional.

Dependent on being easy enough, pretty enough, quiet enough, useful enough.

But Steve loves you without condition.

And being seen that intimately by someone so good—someone as warm and earnest and sincere as Steve Harrington—feels unbearable sometimes.

Maybe that’s why nights like this overwhelm you so badly.

A fancy dinner downtown stretches long past sunset, candlelight flickering gold across Steve’s face while he steals bites from your plate despite insisting twenty minutes ago he was “seriously so stuffed.”

Wine leaves his cheeks faintly pink by the time you leave the restaurant. His tie hangs loose, crooked around his throat, top buttons undone and sleeves rolled to his elbows. Summer heat still clings to the sidewalks even this late at night, thick with blooming jasmine spilling from flower boxes outside storefronts. Somewhere farther downtown, music drifts through open bar doors, muffled bass and laughter carried through the warm air.

Steve's hand never leaves your lower back, fingers flexing gently against you whenever the crowd thickens, pulling you instinctively closer to his chest.

By the time you drift into the park, your heels are dangling from one hand and your body feels pleasantly heavy from the wine.

The grass is cool beneath your bare feet. Damp earth presses between your toes as you wander deeper along the meadow paths, fireflies blinking through the dark around you like floating embers.

Steve is halfway through retelling some ridiculous story his students had told him earlier that day, pausing every other sentence because he keeps getting distracted trying to kiss you.  

Grass stains smear across the knees of his expensive slacks when he finally pulls you down beside him into the field.

“Steve,” you protest weakly, glancing at his pants.

“What?” he asks innocently, tightening his hands around your waist.

“Those are gonna stain.”

“Mm.” He kisses the corner of your mouth, grin lazy. “Worth it.”

You lose track of time there.

Talking between kisses, lying shoulder-to-shoulder in the grass while Steve points out constellations he names wrong on purpose just to make you argue with him. His fingers comb slowly through your hair while your head rests against his shoulder, skin sticking together in the humid night air.

And by the time he gets you home, you’re half-floating.

Steve crowds you against the apartment door before the lock has even clicked shut.

Both hands on your waist, lips sealing over yours. The force of it nudges you softly into the door, his body fitting against yours as he grunts low into your mouth like he’s been holding himself back all night.

Sweet burgundy wine still lingers on his tongue when his lips part against yours.

He’s warm everywhere.

Warm hands sliding beneath your dress, warm mouth against your throat. Warm breath ghosting over newly exposed skin every time he pauses to look at you.

And he does pause, constantly.

Heavy-lidded hazel eyes drag across your face, your throat, the curve of your body beneath his hands, lips gone slack from that third glass of Merlot though his smile tells you he’s drunk on more than just the wine.

His palms skim along the back of your thighs while he kisses down your neck, the soft scrape of his stubble pulling a shaky breath in the shape of his name.

He smiles against your skin, feeling your fingers clutch tighter at his shoulders.

“C’mere,” he murmurs softly.

The bedroom lights stay low when he walks you backward toward the bed.

Blue comforter wrinkling beneath you when he eases you onto your back, following you down, kissing over every inch of exposed skin while your heartbeat stutters harder with each press of his mouth.

Broad palms smooth upward beneath your dress while his lips trail lower, the slow descent of it dizzying; his mouth dragging across your collarbone, the center of your chest, down your stomach, your ribs, each kiss separated by warm breaths and playful nips that make your muscles jump.

And when he kneels at the foot of the bed—nudging your legs apart carefully, lovingly, thumbs stroking slow circles into the soft skin inside your thighs as he settles himself in between—he lets out this quiet little sigh.

Like nowhere else on earth could possibly compare to this.

“Pretty girl,” he murmurs against you, pressing the words directly into your skin. “You’re so beautiful.”

His fingers hook beneath the waistband of your underwear while he glances up at you through heavy lashes, tongue darting briefly to wet his lower lip.

You reach for his hair quickly, panic flaring.

“Steve,” you whisper. “Wait.”

His hands still immediately where they rest on your hips. “What’s wrong?”

You swallow hard. “Nothing, I just...”

Your head spins pleasantly and horribly all at once from the wine and the heat and the sweet boy kneeling between your thighs looking at you like you hung the moon.

“I should shower first.”

His brows pull together. “Why?”

“Because,” you laugh weakly. “I’m sweaty.”

Steve smiles at that, like it’s the sweetest thing he’s heard all day.

He leans in even closer, nose brushing over your clothed mound before he presses a slow kiss there.

“Baby,” he murmurs against you, “I don’t care.”

“Steve...”

“I mean it.”

His hands glide upward along your waist, warm and heavy as velvet, fingertips grazing your ribs on the way up.

“I like you like this,” he says softly.

Then he takes in a breath.

A deep, deliberate pull through his nose, the warm drag of air against the damp fabric making your thighs twitch around him.

“You smell good,” he murmurs, kissing you there again. “Like summer.”

Your face burns, but Steve only smiles wider, already halfway gone.

“Just stay,” he whispers. “Let me take care of you. We can take a bath after, promise.”

He turns his head to the side, nose nudging affectionately along your inner thigh before he closes his lips around the sensitive skin there. The suction is soft at first, teasing warmth into you before the pressure deepens just enough to sting pleasantly.   

A new love bite starts to bloom, petal-soft and tender, like a flower kissed awake by rain. His mouth traces over it, soothing the flush of it back into softer color with gentle, unhurried pecks.

“So pretty,” he murmurs, pressing another kiss over the bruise-tinted skin. “My perfect girl.”

To be loved this intensely feels like it could swallow you whole.

Like the warmth of it could burn straight through you.

You don’t even realize you’ve started crying until your breath catches sharply in your chest, a raw, jagged gasp tearing from your lungs.

Steve’s head snaps up instantly.

You jerk your face away in horror, both hands flying to cover your eyes before he can see.

God.

Oh god.

Not now.

Why now?

“Baby, are you—”

His voice cuts off the second your breath stutters again, louder this time.

The mattress jolts beneath you as he pushes upright, fast enough that the bed frame gives a small protesting creak.

“Hey, hey—what’s wrong?”

You can feel him at your side immediately, his quick, uneven breaths brushing against your hands where they're pressed tight to your face.

“Baby, what happened?”

His fingers curl around your wrists, firm but impossibly gentle.

Always gentle.

“Did I hurt you? Did I do something?”

“N-no,” you choke out immediately.

“Then what?” His voice starts to break slightly, turning sharp with worry. “What is it? Honey, what’s wrong?”

You shake your head helplessly, unable to form the words, unable to explain.

The lamp clicks on beside you. Warm amber light spills across everything at once: rumpled sheets and discarded clothes, Steve kneeling beside you, shirt open at the collar, belt buckle undone and tie hanging loose around his neck.  

The flowers from dinner are on the dresser.

Slightly uneven in their vase, waterline crooked, the hydrangeas beginning to open wider in the warmth of your apartment.

Embarrassment crashes over you like a wave.

Perfect.

A night he’d planned so carefully—reservations at the candlelit Italian place downtown, your favorite wine already waiting at your table, flowers arranged before you’d even walked through the door—

And now you’re crying halfway through sex because your brain can’t handle something as simple as being loved.

You turn your face away again instinctively, shoulders curling inward, but the tears don’t stop. They come harder, messy and humiliating, gasps of air ripping through your chest no matter how hard you try to swallow them down.

You feel Steve’s hand slide up your spine.

Slow, slow passes between your shoulder blades, fingertips pressing gently.

“Hey,” he whispers. “Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to hide, okay? You don’t have to hide from me.”

“I’m sorry,” you choke out, wiping at your face uselessly. “I-I don’t know w-why I’m—I’m sorry, fuck, I’m sorry—”  

“No, hey, don’t apologize, baby. Don’t say sorry.”

You resist him weakly when he tries to gather you in his arms.

You can’t look at him.

Can’t stand the thought of seeing the concern on his face after ruining this.

“I just—” You let out a shaky breath, voice cracking completely. “Fuck, I-I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Steve stills at that.

Then slowly, carefully, he takes your wrists fully in both hands.

You let him this time. Arms trembling the entire way down as he lowers your hands into his lap. You still refuse to meet his eyes, staring instead at the heavy rise and fall of his chest. His crisp white shirt is wrinkled, open at the collar, a faint pink bite mark just above his collarbone where you kissed him during the taxi ride home.  

His gaze presses into you, heavy and intent, trying to read what you can’t say.

“I need you to look at me,” he says quietly.

“I can’t.”

“Yeah,” he answers immediately. “You can.”

Another tear slips down your cheek. He catches it without hesitation, wiping it away with the pad of his thumb.

“Please,” he whispers, softer now. “Look at me.”

You finally do.

Steve’s hair is a mess, chestnut strands falling across his forehead where your fingers had been tangled moments ago.

His eyes—warm honey and green and amber all blurred together beneath the low light—are pained, tight with worry and unbearably expressive.

“There's nothing wrong with you,” he says, unshakably certain. “Nothing.”

His lips are swollen from kissing you, parted slightly with how hard he’s breathing.

It’s so painfully clear, how panicked he is.

Steve’s face never hides anything

It doesn’t know how to.

When he’s happy, it shows in the soft wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

When he’s worried, it gathers in his brows, in the tight set of his mouth.

And when he loves, it radiates from him so naturally it feels endless. Like sunlight.

You wonder what that must feel like.

To love someone without fear.

To offer tenderness without expectation, without the quiet dread that grows the more there is to lose.

He reaches up slowly, clearing tear-sticky strands away from your temples, thumb brushing beneath your eye. Still trying to read what hurts, the furrow in his brows asking without words.

You want to tell him.

For him, you’d try.

But the truth feels monstrous once it reaches your throat.

How do you explain that being loved by him feels unbearable sometimes?

That every touch lands somewhere deep inside you that still expects pain?

That he gives and gives and gives, asking for nothing in return, and yet some terrified part of you waits for the bill to come due?

How do you explain that it makes you feel broken, not knowing how to take something he gives so easily?

You part your lips, throat dry and aching.

Steve waits, thumb rubbing soothing circles into your wrists.

Patient.

Always so fucking patient with you.

“I just...” Your voice shakes. You stare at his mouth instead of his eyes, because it’s easier than being seen.

“...I just really love you.”

It rushes out so quickly.

And in a horrifyingly beautiful moment of clarity, you realize it’s the first time you’ve ever said it to anyone.

Ever.

Steve goes still. His brows soften, eyes drooping at the corners. His lips part soundlessly for a second.

“Oh,” he breathes.

You feel his hands twitch against yours, squeezing your fingers unconsciously.  

“I love you too,” he says, immediate and certain. “I... I love you so much it’s kind of insane.”

He watches you for a moment, thumb rubbing slow over your knuckles.

“Is that... is that why you're crying? 'Cause you love me a lot?”

A small, startled laugh breaks through your tears; it sounds so simple when he says it like that.   

It isn’t simple.

But maybe it also is.

So you nod, watching him visibly come back to himself, drawing out a shaky breath, shoulders dropping heavily like he’d been bracing too, just in a different way.

“Okay,” he murmurs. “Okay. C’mere.”

This time you don’t hesitate.

You fold into him, feeling his arm wrap securely around your back, the other cradling the back of your head.

And what you always used to brace against—tonight, you sink into willingly.

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs into your hair.

You let your eyes slip shut, burying your face in the crook of his neck, fingers crinkling his shirt as you hold on tight.

“I love you,” you whisper again, the words pressed softly against his skin.

Thank you, you mean.

Thank you for being gentle with me. Thank you for waiting. Thank you for loving me like it’s easy.

Thank you.

the second you saw those two pink lines, your entire world stopped.

because it wasn't just that you were pregnant.

it was that you were pregnant with gator tillman's baby.

and in stark county? where roy tillman controls the town through fear alone?

it's more terrifying than any normal accidental pregnancy.

roy viewed people as possessions. as tools. as leverage.

and if he found out that his son got a girl pregnant, you were convinced roy would find a way to ruin it.

or worse: make gator choose.

so you decide that you need to protect him, and protecting him means avoiding him completely, even though it breaks your heart.

at first gator just thinks you're busy.

then he thinks you're upset.

then he thinks maybe he did something wrong.

and eventually he's just driving himself insane.

you aren't answering his calls, you're leaving church early, you use the back exit at the diner when you see his patrol truck pull up.

if he walks into a room, you've somehow already disappeared.

poor guy will find anyone around town who will listen and ask them the same question a hundred times.

"what'd i do?"

and not a single person has answers.

meanwhile, your morning sickness is beating your ass, and you're trying so hard to hide it.

emphasis on trying.

one sunday morning you're halfway through church when you suddenly bolt for the bathroom.

and unfortunately for you, gator sees. and immediately follows.

not into the women's bathroom, of course. a deputy badge only gets him so far.

but he plants himself right outside the door, arms crossed, and waits.

when you finally emerge, pale and miserable, he's just standing there.

"you alright?"

and your heart nearly shatters, because honestly you want nothing more than to let him take care of you.

but you just nod and say "i'm fine" before leaving.

he knows you're lying. he's not stupid. but he lets you leave, already mentally planning his next step in this investigation.

eventually, your first doctors appointment arrives.

you're already terrified before you even walk into the clinic, then nearly drop dead when you see gator already sitting in the waiting room.

apparently, he'd called around town, and the next town, and the next town asking questions and using his badge to get some information.

the badge may not get him in the church women's bathroom, but it does get him into clinic appointment records.

"gator-" "what's wrong?"

no hello. no small talk. straight to business, because he's been worried for weeks.

"nothing" "bullshit"

he can barely even look at you because he's so frustrated. scared. hurt. worried.

"you sick?" "no!" "you're lyin' to me"

fortunately, before he can press further, the nurse calls your name.

unfortunately, because life hates you and has great timing, she also says "we're ready for you, mama" with a sweet unknowing smile.

gator's head slowly turns, and you feel your soul leave your body.

"...mama?"

you start crying instantly right there in the waiting room.

because now it's over, roy will find out, everything is ruined.

but instead of getting angry, gator just grabs your hands.

"hey, hey, look at me, look at me sweetheart"

and when you finally do...he's smiling. actually smiling.

"we got a baby?"

we. we.

not you. not why didn't you tell me.

we.

you're suddenly crying even harder, trying to explain, trying to tell him you're scared, trying to tell him about roy, and gator just listens.

because now he understands.

after that, gator assumes things are gonna go back to normal.

maybe not immediately, but eventually. because now he knows and now he can help.

except they don't, because you're still avoiding him.

not because you don't love him or because you're angry.

but because every time you look at him, you imagine roy finding out and every single terrible thing that might happen afterward.

so you keep your distance.

and poor gator is absolutely baffled.

"i know why you've been hidin' now" "mhm" "so why are you still hidin'?"

you don't know how to explain that you're trying to save him from a future that hasn't even happened yet.

meanwhile, gator has decided that if you're not coming to him, he's coming to you. constantly.

not in an overbearing way. but he's just everywhere somehow.

you walk outside one morning and there's a bag hanging from your porch railing with crackers, apples, ginger ale, popsicles.

total mystery.

definitely not the deputy parked down the road. definitely not him.

he keeps doing it too. every week.

groceries. snacks. soup. prenatal vitamins. one time there's even flowers.

another time you come home from work and your lawn has been mowed.

it drives you insane, because every sweet thing he does makes it harder to stay away, which is the exact opposite of what you're trying to accomplish.

one afternoon you're sitting on your porch, exhausted and emotional and staring into space, and a truck pulls up.

guess who. again.

at this point you're not even surprised anymore.

"what are you doing here?" "brought you lunch" "gator" "what?" "you were just here yesterday" "okay"

but his favorite thing is every appointment, because that's the one place you can't escape him.

every appointment. every ultrasound. every blood draw. every checkup.

he's there before you. like, literally before you.

you'll pull into the parking lot, and his truck is already sitting there, every single time. and he’s sitting in the waiting room, coffee in hand, pretending he wasn't watching the door.

then the second you walk in, he stands.

and no matter how distant you've been, no matter how much you've avoided him, his first question is always "how you feelin' today?"

never why aren't you calling? why are you avoiding me? what's wrong with you?

just "you feel okay? the baby feel okay?"

because that's genuinely all he cares about, and that's what starts breaking down the walls you've put up.

not the groceries. not the flowers. it's the fact that he's never asking for anything.

he's not trying to make you feel guilty, he's not demanding your attention, he's not making this about himself.

eventually one day you finally ask him "why do you keep showing up?"

and he looks at you like you've asked the dumbest question imaginable. genuinely confused.

"because it's you"

that's it. that's his entire answer.

you're scared, pregnant, carrying his baby. so obviously he's gonna keep showing up.

whether it takes a week, a month, six months.

he'll keep leaving groceries. keep showing up at appointments. keep checking on you. keep making sure you've eaten.

because if you aren't ready to lean on him yet, he'll just stand close enough until you are.

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