rey

His mouth is still open. His eyes snap to yours and you watch it happen. The full-body freeze, every single micro-movement ceasing at once in a way that is deeply, fundamentally not human. No one goes that still. No thing goes that still except something that has learned, through meticulous and painstaking practice, how to move in the first place.

The tongue—

It retracts so fast you almost don't track it, pulled back behind his teeth like a flinch, and his jaw clicks shut.

BB doesn't step back. He doesn't breathe. The bright blue of his eyes goes flat and cautious.

"Sorry, baby." His voice is perfect. Bobby's voice is always perfect. The pitch, the drawl, the way the vowels open warm and lazy. But the word comes out clipped. Bitten off at the root. "That was—I wasn't— "

He's afraid.

The recognition hits you somewhere below your ribs and spreads.

Not afraid of you. Afraid of what your face is doing right now, afraid of whatever you're about to say. That this is the seam you'll hook your fingers into and pull until the whole beautiful lie peels apart and you see whatever's underneath. That you'll scream or you run or you look at him like he's a thing to be hated and feared.

"Hey." Your voice comes out steadier than you feel. "Hey. Come here."

You bring your hands up. Cup his jaw. His skin is warmer than usual. You wonder if it's the kissing or if he thermoregulated to a point of contact that your nervous system reads as safe.

You feel the rigid clench of the muscle beneath.

He won't look at you. He's looking at the wall behind your head with an expression so perfectly, carefully neutral it makes your chest ache.

You run your thumb across his cheekbone. "BB. Show me."

The stillness fractures. There's movement behind his eyes. Not the black, not yet, but something vast and uncertain, something that doesn't fit inside the geometry of a human face.

"You don't—"

"Show me. Please."

You lean in. Press your mouth to his, soft, no demand in it. Just heat, just contact, just here, here, I'm here.

He makes a sound against your lips. Low, resonant, tectonic. You feel it in your teeth, in the juncture of your jaw, a vibration that no human throat could produce and that your body interprets as the auditory equivalent of being held. It rumbles through the wall at your back. The fluorescent lights above you flicker, once.

Your tongue finds his.

BB hesitates. You feel it. The moment of restraint, the tension of something held deliberately in check. You press closer, flush against him now, fingers sliding into his sandy blonde hair, and lick along the seam of his lower lip.

And you wait.

Slowly—so slowly—it unfurls.

The velvety texture meets yours first, denser than before, slick-soft and fever-warm and alive in a way that makes the hinge of your jaw prickle. It slides along your tongue with a deliberateness that is almost shy, tasting you in a way that feels less like a kiss and more like a question, and then (gently, gently) it coils.

Once around yours. A slow, sinuous wrap, delicate, barely any pressure. The ridged texture drags against your taste buds in a rolling wave that lights up nerve endings you didn't know a mouth had.

Your breath stutters. Heat drops through you like a stone into dark water, pooling low and heavy in your belly. Heat tightens behind your navel, and your fingers curl hard in his hair and you hear yourself make a sound, a small wrecked thing, muffled between your mouths.

BB goes rigid against you.

Then the rumble comes again—deeper, shattered open with raw and desperate and relieved undertone—and the coil tightens, just barely. You feel the tip of it trace the roof of your mouth in a slow electric drag and your hips roll forward into his without your permission, your whole body clenching.

He shudders. Full-body. Not a human shudder. Too fluid, too thorough, like he's settling into his own skin for the first time.

BB's hand on your hip tightens to the edge of bruising and the wall behind you pulses warm, buzzing of the lights shifting pitch. They drop into something almost harmonic, almost musical, and you realise distantly that the hallway around you is responding to him. To this, to whatever is flooding through whatever he uses for a nervous system right now.

BB pulls back just far enough to breathe against your mouth (he doesn't need to, you know he doesn't need oxygen, he's overwhelmed, he's—).

His lips are wet from you, glistening in the warm light. His eyes are searching your face with a frantic, ravenous attention that has nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with the way a creature that has taught itself love, painstakingly, from the outside in, needs to check—needs to know—

You press your forehead to his, cupping one side of his face.

"Again," you whisper, breathless.

The sound he makes isn't a word in any language. But you feel it everywhere.

you think about what you know about him. what the backrooms have taught you. what you've inferred from the way he moves through this place. the things you've read in his body language when he comes back from whatever he does in the dark hallways with black fluid on his hands.

his entire existence has been pain. fear. darkness. the long stretches of nothing that make up the backrooms' silence. hunger, if he feels hunger. if what drives him to kill is something as simple as that.

loneliness so vast and so old that he built an entire personality out of a stolen face just to have someone to wear toward another person. and rage, maybe. whatever it was that made his eyes go black when jerry touched your mind. whatever lives underneath the bobby suit that is ancient and cold, full of teeth.

that is the complete catalogue of what Better Bobby knows about being alive. pain, fear, darkness, loneliness, hunger, rage.

and here you are. in a blanket nest, tracing his lip with your thumb.

teaching him a new one.

you lean closer. his eyes track you as you do. the pupils doing that too-fast dilation, the one that isn't human. one that means every particle of whatever he is made of is paying attention. you kiss the tip of his nose.

the sound he makes is not a sound a person makes.

it's a vibration. a rasp. something between a frequency and a breath, pulled from somewhere so deep in his chest that you feel it in your own sternum.

his whole body shudders once. a full-body response, involuntary, like every part of him is trying to process a sensation it has no category for. his hands come up and hover at your sides, not touching, not grabbing, just... there. open. shaking. like he wants to hold on to something but doesn't know the protocol for this.

more.

he doesn't say it. bb's mouth doesn't move. but everything else does. his chin tilts up. his eyes go half-lidded. his body angles toward you the way a plant angles toward light. this total, unconscious orientation, and you understand with sudden, devastating clarity that he's asking without knowing how to ask because nobody has ever given him a framework for wanting something gently. this is a human thing, a human softness, and hes unfamiliar with it.

so you kiss his cheek. just lightly. barely there. and the rumble deepens.

the other cheek. his eyes close all the way.

his forehead. the sharp ridge of his brow bone. the corner of his jaw where the bone meets the soft skin underneath. each one a small specific point of contact, your lips against the wrong temperature of his skin, and with each one the sound in his chest grows. layers over itself. becomes something textured and continuous. so low it's almost subsonic. you feel it in your teeth, on your skin. you feel it in the blankets. you feel it in the floor.

the level is vibrating.

not dangerously. not the way the walls did when he snarled at jerry. softly. a hum in the infrastructure. like the walls are resonating with whatever is happening in his chest because he IS the walls, or the walls are him, or the distinction stopped mattering a long time ago. and whatever he's feeling right now is big enough that the walls can't contain it.

you pull back just far enough to look at him.

bb's eyes are open. barely. the blue is so bright it's almost white at the centre. backlit. vast and warm and absolutely not human. his lips are parted. his face is... completely open. no mask. no performance. this is the thing underneath, the real thing, the entity behind the entity, and it is looking at you with an expression that doesn't have a name because nothing has ever felt this before. there is no word for this in any language because this is the first time it has ever existed.

you wrap your arms around him. his arms close around you at once (finally, finally) and you feel the strength in them. the same strength that tore hounds apart, held perfectly perfectly in check. he curls around you in the blanket nest, knees drawn up, face pressed into your hair, and the sound in his chest settles into constant and rhythmic sound.

he's purring.

SECTION 1 — ENTITY SUMMARY

Designation: Entity 0

Colloquial Name(s): "Better Bobby," "The First," "It" (field teams), ██████████████ (designation rescinded, see Incident Report 0-14) Primary Domain: Level 0 (unconfirmed territorial claim over full sublevel network) Secondary Sightings: Levels 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 14, ████, ██████, and the Poolrooms (unverified) Threat Classification: APEX-UNDEFINED Containment Status: UNCONTAINED — ALL CONTAINMENT ATTEMPTS SUSPENDED INDEFINITELY Behavioural Profile: UNPREDICTABLE / ADAPTIVE / SAPIENT (CONFIRMED) Entity Kill Count (Est.): Unknown. See Section 5. Human Kill Count (Conf.): █████ Human Kill Count (Est.): ███████ [DISPUTED — SEE ADDENDUM C]

NOTE FROM DR. ██████, ENTITY RESEARCH LEAD:

It should be on record that the designation 'Entity 0' was not chosen for taxonomic reasons. It was assigned because this entity predates our cataloguing system. We did not discover it. It was already here in what we class as the Backrooms. It may have always been here . The number is not a ranking. It's an admission that we do not know where to place it.

SECTION 2 — PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

2.1 — Primary Manifestation

Entity 0 presents as a young Caucasian male, early-to-mid twenties, consistent with the physical appearance of one Robert "Bobby" Franklin (see Personnel File MEG-P-██████, Status: ACTIVE/DISPLACED). The resemblance is exact in approximately 94% of documented sightings. Remaining sightings note minor deviations: incorrect eye colour under different lighting, subtle asymmetries in facial structure that do not correspond to Franklin's known features, and—in three separate reports—a "wrongness in the joints" that observers struggled to articulate.

Franklin himself has been interviewed extensively regarding Entity 0's use of his likeness. His testimony is included in Addendum A (SEALED). He has requested, on multiple occasions, that M.E.G. ██████████████████████████████████. This request has been denied.

2.2 — Secondary Characteristics

Entity 0 bleeds a black, viscous fluid when injured. Lab analysis of recovered samples has returned ████████████████. A second analysis returned entirely different results. A third analysis caused the spectrometer to ██████████████████████████████████. Testing has been suspended.

Entity 0's body temperature registers approximately 4.2°C below ambient room temperature at all times, regardless of environmental conditions. This remains consistent even in the Poolrooms (if sightings there are verified) and the thermally unstable zones of Level 5.

When Entity 0 believes it is unobserved, field teams have reported the following:

a) Complete cessation of respiration for periods exceeding 45 minutes.

b) Head rotation beyond normal cervical range (estimated 190° in Sighting 0-22).

c) Standing perfectly motionless in a posture that does not account for gravity. One researcher described it as "standing the way a photograph of a person stands. Not wrong. Just not alive."

d) Brief episodes of what appears to be the entity's eyes changing colour—from the documented blue to solid black. Duration: 1-5 seconds. No agent has been close enough to confirm ████████████████.

e) ██████████████████████████████████ ██████████████████████████████████ for approximately nine hours. When Agent ██████ attempted to approach, ██████████████████████████████████. Agent ██████ has requested a transfer. Request granted.

2.3 — True Form

Unknown.

We do not know what Entity 0 looks like. We know what Bobby Franklin looks like. Entity 0 has never been observed without this disguise. Whether the Franklin appearance constitutes a "disguise" or has become the entity's actual physical structure is a matter of ongoing—and increasingly heated—debate within the department.

Dr. ██████ has proposed that Entity 0 may not have a "true form." That it may be, at a fundamental level, a thing that IS other things. This hypothesis is ████████████████.

SECTION 3 — BEHAVIOURAL ANALYSIS

3.1 — Unpredictability Index

Entity 0 has been assigned a Behavioural Unpredictability Index (BUI) of 9.7 out of 10. For context, most Backrooms entities operate between 2 and 6 on this scale. The Skin-Stealers register at 5.1. The Hounds at 3.8. A completely random number generator would score 10.0.

Entity 0 scores a 9.7 because it is not random. It is making decisions. We simply cannot determine the framework.

Documented behavioural range includes:

Allowing a wanderer to pass through Level 0 entirely unmolested, even appearing to clear a path by relocating other entities beforehand (Sighting 0-09).

Killing a wanderer. Method: ██████████████████████████████████. No apparent provocation. (Incident 0-03).

Sitting cross-legged in a hallway for an estimated 72 hours, staring at a wall. (Sighting 0-15). Purpose: unknown.

Engaging a Class 5 entity in what can only be described as combat. Entity 0 won. ██████████████████████████████████. The Class 5 entity has not been sighted since.

Humming. (Multiple sightings.) The melody does not correspond to any known song. ████████████████ has suggested it may be original composition. This is ██████.

Laughing at nothing. (Sighting 0-19.) Duration: four minutes. Laughter matched audio profile of Robert Franklin exactly.

██████████████████████████████████ ██████████████████████████████████ ████████████████. All seven members of Exploration Team Kilo were recovered alive. None will discuss what happened.

3.2 — Evasion Capabilities

Entity 0 does not want to be found. When it is found, it is because it has chosen to be.

M.E.G. has deployed tracking teams on fourteen separate occasions. Results were as follows:

Operation: LAMPLIGHTER Duration: 6 days Result: Entity evaded all contact. Team reported hallways "rearranging" around them.

Operation: NIGHTJAR Duration: 11 days Result: Entity sighted once. Made direct eye contact with lead tracker from end of hallway (est. 200m). Smiled. Vanished.

Operation: FOXGLOVE Duration: 2 hours Result: Entity approached team voluntarily. ██████████████████████████████████. Operation terminated.

Operation: SILKWORM Duration: 9 days Result: No contact. Post-operation analysis revealed entity had been following the tracking team for the final four days.

Operation: TIDEPOOL Duration: ██ days Result: ██████████████████████████████████ ██████████████████████████████████ ████████████████ ██████ ██████████████████████████████████ ████████████████. All further tracking operations suspended by order of ██████.

3.3 — Intelligence

Entity 0 is sapient. This is no longer debated.

It understands English. It understands Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, and—following an incident with Exploration Team Foxtrot—fluent conversational Japanese, despite never having been observed in the presence of a Japanese-speaking wanderer. A comprehensive linguistic audit conducted in 198█ was abandoned after Entity 0 responded to a deliberately obscure dialectal prompt in ██████████████████████████████████. The full list of confirmed languages is maintained in Addendum B. It is not short.

It also understands tactical positioning. It understands, based on Operations NIGHTJAR and SILKWORM, the concept of irony.

What must be emphasised—and what continues to unsettle the department—is how dramatically Entity 0's cognitive profile diverges from every other catalogued entity. Most Backrooms entities operate on recognisable behavioural loops. The Smilers hunt. The Skin-Stealers mimic. The ██████ feed. Even the more complex entities can be understood as sophisticated biological (or pseudo-biological) systems responding to stimuli: hunger, territorial instinct, predatory drive. They do what they do because something in their construction compels them to do it.

Entity 0 does not appear to be compelled to do anything.

It does not hunt for sustenance. It does not hunt for pleasure. It does not, as far as we can determine, hunt at all. Its kills appear to be decisions, made for reasons that change depending on context and that we have failed to model despite years of behavioural data. Other entities are, for lack of a better term, animals. Complex animals. Dangerous animals. But animals still.

Entity 0 operates with what can only be described as intentionality. It makes choices. It weighs outcomes. It has, on at least two documented occasions, changed its mind mid-action, which implies an internal deliberative process that no other entity has demonstrated.

This is what makes it dangerous. Not the strength—though the strength is considerable. Not the evasion capabilities—though those are unmatched. The danger is that Entity 0's internal workings appear to be orders of magnitude more complex than anything else in the Backrooms, and we do not understand them. A Wretch is dangerous the way a bear is dangerous: powerful, aggressive, but ultimately predictable. Entity 0 is dangerous the way a person is dangerous. It thinks. It plans, adapts, and learns. And it does all of this inside a body that can tear a Class 5 entity apart in ninety seconds.

The obvious question—and the one this department has been circling for the better part of two years without satisfactory resolution—is why. Why is Entity 0 so far beyond its peers? Two hypotheses currently hold majority support:

Hypothesis A (Dr. ██████): Entity 0's cognitive superiority is a function of age. It was here first. It has had longer to develop, to complexify, to evolve whatever passes for intelligence in Backrooms entities. Under this model, Entity 0 is not fundamentally different from other entities, it is simply older. The designation "Entity 0" is, in this reading, more literal than intended. It is t he first. Everything else came after. Everything else is younger, simpler, less finished.

Hypothesis B (Dr. ████████): Entity 0 is not smarter because it is older. It is smarter because it wanted to be. Something in its composition—its origin, its structure, whatever animates it—possesses a drive toward learning that other entities lack. It doesn't just react to its environment. It studies it. It chose to wear a human face. It chose to learn human language. Not one. Dozens. It chose to understand tactical positioning and irony and the specific way Robert Franklin leans against walls. Other entities absorb. Entity 0 pursues. If this hypothesis is correct, the follow-up question becomes deeply uncomfortable: what is it learning toward? What is the curriculum building to? What does an entity that has spent ██████████████ years teaching itself to be more look like when it decides it has learned enough?

Neither hypothesis has been confirmed. Both are ███████████████.

Researcher's note: I have been asked, off the record, which hypothesis I find more frightening. The answer is (B). It's always (B).

SECTION 4 — TERRITORIAL BEHAVIOUR & DOMAIN

Level 0 (otherwise known as "The Threshold") is, by consensus, Entity 0's domain.

This is not an official M.E.G. designation but a practical observation. Entity 0 moves through Level 0 with a freedom and familiarity that no other entity displays. It does not navigate the space. It inhabits it. Hallways that shift and reconfigure for wanderers appear to remain static in Entity 0's presence, or, more disturbingly, reconfigure according to its preference.

There is a growing body of evidence—currently classified under Review Protocol ██████—suggesting that Level 0 may not simply be Entity 0's territory. It may be its ████████████. This hypothesis was first proposed by Dr. ██████ in 198█ and was initially dismissed. Following Incident 0-11, in which Entity 0 appeared to ██████████████████████████████████ ████████████████ an entire corridor, the hypothesis has been upgraded to "under active consideration."

Entity 0 has been sighted on other levels, but these incursions appear purposeful and temporary. It always returns to Level 0. One researcher described this pattern as "a predator checking its territory lines," though others have noted the behaviour more closely resembles ████████████████.

SECTION 5 — INTER-ENTITY BEHAVIOUR

Entity 0 kills other entities.

This requires emphasis because it is, within the context of Backrooms ecology, abnormal. Entities compete for territory aggressively. Entities avoid each other. Entities engage in dominance displays. Sometimes they have been observed working together to hunt and kill wanderers. Entities do not, as a rule, destroy each other with the kind of systematic, almost casual efficiency that Entity 0 demonstrates.

Confirmed Entity 0 kills:

1x Class 5 Entity (undesignated). Method: ██████████████████████████. Duration of engagement: approx. 90 seconds.

5x Hounds. Simultaneous. Entity 0 did not appear injured afterward.

17x Skin-Stealer. Entity 0 appeared to take particular ██████ with this kill. Duration: ██████. Research team observing from concealment requested psychological support afterward.

██████x ████████████████. Circumstances: ██████████████████████████████████ ██████████████████████████████████. See Section 6.

1x entity of unknown classification. Entity 0 was observed speaking to it before killing it. Words were inaudible. Lip-reading analysis suggested ██████████████████████████████████. Lip-reading analyst has since resigned.

Few entities engage in aggression toward Entity 0. The implication of such is clear: within the Backrooms ecosystem, Entity 0 is an apex predator. Other entities tend to avoid it. Some—including the Hounds, which fear nothing else in our catalogue—have been documented actively fleeing its approach.

There are, however, notable exceptions.

The Howlers appear to be, at minimum, a genuine physical threat. They have engaged Entity 0 on at least three documented occasions. The encounters were violent and protracted in a way that Entity 0's other kills are not. During Incident 0-09, Entity 0 was observed sustaining visible damage. The first and only confirmed instance of an entity injuring it in combat. The black fluid was extensive. Entity 0 killed two Howlers, but it took ██ minutes, and afterward it remained stationary in the corridor for nearly two hours. Whether this constituted recovery, pain, or something else, we cannot say. But it did not move, and field team noted it was not humming.

More concerning is the entity's documented behaviour regarding ████████████████████████████, tentatively catalogued as Entity ██████, sighted exclusively on Levels ██████ and ██████. We have very little data on this entity—three sightings total, all partial, all from significant distance—but what we do have is this: during Sighting 0-46, Entity 0 was transiting a hallway on Level ██████ when it stopped. Abruptly. The tracking team reported that it stood perfectly still for approximately ninety seconds, head tilted, and then turned around and walked the other way.

Entity 0 has never, in our observational history, retreated from anything.

What Entity 0 is protecting, or hunting, or maintaining through this behaviour remains unknown.

SECTION 6 — THE COMPANION

⚠ CLASSIFICATION: LEVEL 4 EYES ONLY — SUBSECTION RESTRICTED TO SENIOR RESEARCH PERSONNEL ⚠

6.1 — Initial Sighting

During Operation SILKWORM, tracking team reported an anomalous observation that did not pertain to the primary mission objective. Entity 0 was sighted in a hallway junction on Level 0, sublevel ██████. It was not alone.

A human female was observed walking alongside Entity 0.

Estimated age: ███. Physical description: ██████████████████████████████████. She was wearing ████████████████ and appeared to be in good physical health. She was not restrained, and was not visibly distressed. She was, by all observable measures, walking with Entity 0 voluntarily.

Entity 0 was walking between the female and the nearest dark hallway.

The tracking team leader noted this detail three times in her field report, underlining it twice. I am including it here because the behavioural implication is significant: Entity 0 was positioning itself as a barrier between the female and potential threats. This is protective behaviour. This is not something Entity 0 has ever displayed toward any other human in our records.

6.2 — Subsequent Sightings

Ref: S-31 Level: 0 Observation: Entity 0 and Companion seated against wall. Entity 0 appeared to be keeping watch while Companion slept. Entity 0 was humming.

Ref: S-34 Level: 2 Observation: Companion observed navigating. Entity 0 following. Unusual. Entity 0 does not typically follow. It leads or it ██████.

Ref: S-37 Level: 0 Observation: Entity 0 observed retrieving ██████ and presenting them to Companion. Companion laughed. Entity 0 displayed what appeared to be satisfaction.

Ref: S-41 Level: 3 Observation: Two Hounds approached Companion's position. Entity 0 intercepted. █████████████████████████████. Companion did not appear surprised by the violence. She waited. When Entity 0 returned, she handed it ██████ and they continued walking.

Ref: S-44 Level: ██████ Observation: ████████████████████████████████ █████████████████████████ ████████████████. Observation team was withdrawn immediately. Dr. ██████████ has classified this sighting at Level 5. I have not been told why.

6.3 — Identity of the Companion

The Companion has been tentatively identified as █████████████████████████, a civilian reported missing on ██████████. Missing persons report was filed by Robert Franklin. Notably, █████████████████████████ was in a relationship with Robert Franklin at the time of disappearance.

The implications of this connection—that Entity 0 selected a companion who was romantically involved with the individual whose appearance it wears—are not lost on this department. Theories range from predatory luring strategy (see Dr. ██████'s analysis, Addendum D) to ██████████████████████████████████ to something far more ████████████████ that several senior researchers have declined to put in writing.

6.3.1 — Anomaly: Erasure of Civilian Records

During routine cross-referencing with surface-level contacts, research staff discovered that the Companion's missing persons file had been closed. Not resolved. Closed. Reason listed: ████████████████. The filing officer has no memory of processing the closure.

Subsequent investigation revealed a broader pattern. The Companion's lease has been reassigned. Her workplace has no record of employment. Her university transcript exists but is flagged as a clerical duplicate with no corresponding student ID. Photographs in which she appears have not been removed: she is simply no longer in them. The physical prints are unaltered. The space where she stood is just empty. As though no one was there to begin with.

This is not normal. Wanderers who enter the Backrooms leave gaps. Families search. Records persist. Missing persons cases go cold but they do not evaporate. In ██████ years of documented Backrooms disappearances, we have never seen evidence of a wanderer being actively erased from the surface world.

Something is removing her. Not killing her. She is alive and accounted for in the Backrooms. Removing the idea of her. The evidence that she existed at all.

The obvious question is whether Entity 0 is capable of exerting influence beyond the Backrooms. The less obvious and considerably more unsettling question is why it would want to. If Entity 0 is erasing the Companion's surface existence, the implication is not destruction. It is permanence. You do not erase someone's way back unless you intend for them to stay.

This has been flagged as a Priority 1 concern. Dr. ██████ has requested that Robert Franklin be monitored for signs of ████████████████. Request granted.

6.4 — Behavioural Implications

Entity 0, in the presence of the Companion, behaves differently than in any other documented context. Specifically:

a) Aggression toward other entities increases by an estimated 300%. Entity 0's territory, already dangerous, becomes functionally impassable when the Companion is present.

b) Unpredictability decreases. Entity 0''s movements become more structured, more purposeful, more oriented around the Companion's location. For the first time in our observational history, Entity 0 is behaving in a way that can be partially predicted.

c) The entity has been observed performing behaviours with no survival utility: adjusting the Companion's blanket, standing in specific positions to block fluorescent light while she sleeps, █████████████████████████████████. These behaviours have no precedent in our entity catalogue.

d) Entity 0 has not killed a human since the Companion was first sighted. Correlation is not causation. But the correlation is ██████.

SECTION 7 — RESEARCH & CONTAINMENT PROPOSALS

7.1 — Proposal: Use the Companion to Study Entity 0

STATUS: UNDER REVIEW

The Companion represents an unprecedented opportunity. Entity 0, which has evaded every tracking operation, every surveillance deployment, and every research team we have sent into Level 0, has voluntarily anchored itself to a single human being. Its movements are, for the first time ever, partially predictable. Its behaviour, for the first time, has an identifiable variable: her.

Proposal 7.1-A (Dr. ██████████): Establish covert observation posts along confirmed Companion travel routes. Do nott engage. Do not approach. Observe only. Use the Companion's presence to map Entity 0's behavioural patterns, territorial boundaries, and, if possible, communication methods.

Proposal 7.1-B (Dr. ██████): Make contact with the Companion. Offer extraction. If she accepts, observe Entity 0's response. If she declines—and this is the part of the proposal that generated significant debate in committee—ask her to serve as a voluntary research asset. She has closer access to Entity 0 than any M.E.G. (or outside) operative has ever achieved. She is, in effect, already conducting the field study we have failed to execute fourteen times.

Proposal 7.1-C: ██████████████████████████████████ ██████████████████████████████████ ████████████████. This proposal was submitted anonymously. It has been rejected. The author is encouraged to identify themselves to their supervisor immediately.

7.2 — Proposal: Use the Companion to Contain Entity 0

STATUS: REJECTED (SEE BELOW)

If Entity 0 will not leave the Companion, then controlling the Companion's location is, theoretically, controlling Entity 0's location.

This proposal was rejected for the following reasons:

We do not know whether Entity 0's attachment to the Companion represents affection, possession, predation, or something outside human behavioural pattern. Assuming it is exploitable is assuming we understand it. We do not.

If Entity 0 perceives the Companion's removal as a threat, its response is unpredictable and potentially catastrophic. Given its documented combat capabilities—including the destruction of a Class 5 entity in under two minutes—the risk to extraction personnel is classified as ██████.

The Companion may not be a hostage. She may be there voluntarily. If so, forcible extraction raises ethical concerns that this department is not equipped to adjudicate.

██████████████████████████████████ ██████████████████████████████████ ████████████████. If this turns out to be accurate, containment is not merely inadvisable. It is ███████████████.

NOTE FROM OPERATIONS DIRECTOR ██████:

I'm going to be blunt. We have spent years and ██████ operatives trying to understand Entity 0. We've tried to catalogue its kills, map its territory and even document its evasion capabilities. And in all that time, the single greatest advance in our understanding of this entity has come from a civilian girl who, as far as we can tell, wandered in through a door that shouldn't exist and started treating an apex predator like a stray cat.

She has learned more about Entity 0 by being near it than we have learned in fourteen operations. I'm not comfortable with what that implies about our methodology. I'm even less comfortable with what it implies about Entity 0's capacity for selective trust.

Recommendation (to be forwarded to every agency looking into this Entity): observe. Do not intervene. Do not extract. Do not, under any circumstances, threaten the Companion's safety within Entity 0's perceptual range.

I've seen what it does to things that threaten what belongs to it.

I don't want to see what it would do to us.

SECTION 8 — OPEN QUESTIONS

The following questions remain unanswered. They are listed in order of departmental priority. Personnel with relevant information are instructed to report to Dr. ██████ immediately.

What is Entity 0? Not what does it look like. Not how does it behave. What IS it?

What does it want with the Companion? Protection implies investment. What is the return?

What is the entity's relationship to Level 0 itself? Is it an inhabitant, a guardian, a ██████, or something we do not have terminology for?

Why Bobby Franklin? Of all possible appearances, why this specific individual? Is is merely due to Companion's prior history with Franklin or █████████████?

The Companion has been in the Backrooms for an estimated ██████. Standard survival expectancy for an unaffiliated civilian without supplies is 1-3 days. She is alive and healthy. How? And more importantly, why?

██████████████████████████████████?

During Sighting S-44, observation team reported ██████████████████████████████████ ██████████████████████████████████. If this is accurate, does Entity 0 possess ████████████████? And if so, has the Companion been ██████?

Is Entity 0 capable of love? (This question was submitted by Junior Researcher ██████ and was initially struck from the record. It has been reinstated by order of Dr. ██████, who noted, and I quote: "It's the only question that actually matters.")

END OF DOSSIER

File Status: OPEN — NEVER CLOSED Next Mandatory Review: ████████████████

"We have been studying Entity 0 for years. I am no longer certain it has not been studying us for longer."

— Dr. ██████, final departmental memo before ████████████████

There was nothing better than a cloudy afternoon in your apartment, the world outside muted and grey, while inside you had warmth, comfort, and the company of your boyfriend with a movie humming faintly in the background—something neither of you were really watching anymore—as you're sitting on the sofa, legs open, perfectly at ease, happy and relaxed, letting him do…

Well, that strange thing he’s been obsessed with for weeks now.

He's on his knees between your thighs, shoulders tense with effort, face buried right where the heat radiates from you. He hadn’t even touched your bare skin yet, just pressing his mouth to the thin cotton stretched over you. Your panties, damp from the earlier teasing were soaked through now, clinging to your feverish skin. His tongue moves against the barrier testing and pushing, little slow strokes that make you twitch because of the ticklish sensation that travels up your core to every place under your skin.

Then, as if something snapped loose in him, the licks came faster, so sloppy, as though he couldn’t believe you are letting him do it, as though he was scared you will take it away if he doesn't devour you every second.

At first, he seemed awkwardly harmless when he asked—shy, almost tripping over his own words. Typical Dex.

Up until then, your relationship hadn’t crossed the line of kisses and hesitant touches, so when he finally deigned to ask you that, your smile spread without you meaning it to. It wasn’t that you were shy—you knew eventually you’d ask him yourself—but there was something disarming about the way he rushed to get the words out, as if the idea had been gnawing at him for too long to keep inside.

The weight slipped off your shoulders in the moment he said it, he saved you from being the one to break that invisible wall first. Just a quiet, offhand question slipped between laughs during a silly conversation full of intimacy.

You could still hear his voice in your head, low and a little rushed, which made you think that if he said it too clearly it might sound like too much. And yet the request had been simple enough, almost innocent, if not for the heat behind it.

That way, he wouldn’t have to keep sneaking around, wouldn’t have to “borrow” your panties the way he had been doing—thinking you hadn’t noticed or that his little secret was safe.

The truth was that you had noticed. Of course you had, and the thought of him alone with something that belonged to you, so desperate enough to do that, all of it was too tempting to just stare at him as if he was a weirdo, that's not how you are, you're hyperaware of the fact you enjoy your awkward freak and you can't bring yourself to judge such act covered in worship.

“Dex,” you murmur, fingers curling into his hair, tugging just enough to make him look at you, “you know you can take them off, right? At this point you’ve kind of already eaten them.” The words slip out with a breathless giggle, the fabric clinging to you sticky and soaked from his persistence.

He doesn’t stop right away. He presses his mouth harder, trying to drink through the thin barrier, and there's a desperate noise vibrating against you when you finally tug him back, his lips are swollen, slick with spit and the product of your satisfaction.

“Yeah I know,” he says, voice a little muffled. He swallows hard before admitting, “but I don’t really know that,” his breath hitches, his cheeks flushing deeper, and he shifts like he’s embarrassed by the confession but can’t help himself.

“I like… I like how they taste like this, I also want to try more, but you'd probably be disappointed,” that last part comes with a breathy, nervous laugh that has you smiling.

He presses his mouth back to the soaked spot, dragging his tongue slowly over it until your breath stutters in your chest. The pressure isn’t nearly enough, not with the fabric still in the way, but watching him try to rut against nothing while he licks and sucks greedily has your whole body burning. He’s a mess somehow—hips jerking, shoulders tight with restraint, mouth working like he thinks if he just tries harder he’ll get to the sweetness beneath.

“You could never disappoint me,” you murmur, encouraging. “Besides, you already know some tricks,”

The small compliment makes him finally look up at you, pupils blown wide, lashes trembling with every desperate blink. His lips shine, wet and swollen, and he looks undone just from this. You giggle when he just stares at you like you just said something that he will never forget.

“Not that look…” you tease, laughter breaking the tension for a heartbeat.

He answers with a quick, clumsy lick against the damp fabric just where your clit is swollen beneath the material, like a puppy desperate to please, earning another little sound from your throat.

“Alright,” you exhale, your thighs twitching, the teasing burning into frustration, “this is too much. I’m gonna teach you Dex—so you can do it good and please me properly—because you’re making me go crazy here.”

Your words make him shiver, his hands tightening on your thighs like he’s bracing for a lesson he’s been waiting his whole life to take.

“Are you sure?” his voice makes your chest tighten, makes your pulse race in sync with the steady throb between your legs. You give him the smallest nod, and it’s all he needs. His face lights up, so grateful it nearly breaks you. “Okay… okay, thank you,” he whispers.

The way he looks at you makes your stomach flip, he always looks at you like you're something divine and painfully sacred that he still can't believe is by his side.

You can’t wait to show him what he’s capable of, to coax out that potential he’s so desperate to prove. With a quick hand, you hook your thumb into the band pressing against your swollen heat and peel your panties aside, just enough to expose the slick ache he’s been tormenting himself over all this time.

The moment your cunt glistens in the dim light, his breath catches audibly. His eyes go wide, pupils swallowing the pretty hazel, lips parting like he’s about to pray. He stares at the way you shine for him, mesmerized, a wet sigh escaping from you as the cool air kisses your bare skin. His gaze flickers up to your face, only to fall again, drawn helplessly back down.

“Now,” you say softly, steadying his focus, guiding his hunger with a fingertip pointing where you want him. Your swollen clit, just a little below it, “start here with your tongue, yeah? Just a slow lick, baby.”

“Mhm,” he nods quickly almost trembling with the weight of your instruction, leaning in with both of his hands gripping your thighs.

He obeys instantly, no hesitation at all. His tongue drags up your folds with a shaky gasp, slow just like you told him. The sound of it—his raw need bleeding into every movement—makes you shiver. By the time his tongue slides up to touch your clit, your whole body is already leaning into him, greedy for more. His hands clutch your thighs like he’s terrified you’ll push him away, knuckles straining white.

“Good boy,” you murmur, your voice dropping lower, syrupy-sweet with approval. The effect is immediate—he has to take a moment to whine, then lick his lips to continue.

“Just like that,” you guide, and he follows before you even finish speaking, desperate to earn more of your approval. His tongue circles your clit in quick little swirls, messy but effective, each one sending sparks dancing through your belly.

Then he slides lower again, down to where you’re dripping, where your body pulses and clenches with every teasing touch. He pushes the tip of his tongue inside, shallow, but still enough to make your breath catch, to make your thighs tighten reflexively. He doesn’t linger long—only to taste a little bit of what's inside, enough to make you gasp—before moving back up to your clit, the rhythm is not overwhelming but it is intoxicating. Every pass feels better than the last, his tongue applying the right pressure, dragging the sweetest ticklish ache out of you until your lips part in a bitten-back moan.

He’s learning you on instinct alone, desperate, eager, and it’s already making you dizzy.

“Dex,” you gasp, tightening your grip on his hair “Please start sucking, your lips... Use your lips,” twitching and panting feeling pathetic, but no more than him because he nods so quickly, closing his lips around your clit making a little pout that makes you close your eyes and moan.

His muffled mhmm vibrates right against your clit, and the sound alone makes your legs tremble. His mouth doesn’t leave you, not even for a second—he’s latched on now, fully addicted, tongue moving in frantic little circles that border on sloppy but feel like heaven. Every desperate flick drags another wave of heat out of you, and when he sucks—lips pulling tight around your swollen nub—your cunt clenches against nothing, aching, your body trying to grasp at something that isn’t there.

The pressure is relentless, his tongue alternating between circling and pressing, abusing that bundle of raw nerves that has your hips rocking helplessly against his mouth. The broken moan that rips out of you only spurs him on, he groans louder, shamelessly, the sound spilling directly into your skin, feeding off your reaction.

He’s lost in it—lost in your taste, in the tug of your fingers in his hair, in the way you guide each quick movement like you’re conducting him. You don’t even have to look down to know what’s happening to him; you can feel it in the tremor of his shoulders, in the tiny twitch of his body pressed so close to your legs. He’s rutting against the air, straining for friction he can’t have, so turned on it’s almost painful, but he refuses to pull away from you.

The sight alone—his mouth worshipping you while his own body trembles with need—makes the burn inside you coil tighter, ready to snap.

Your free hand drifts down, resting on your lower belly, fingertips grazing your mound. His eyes flicker to the movement, wide and intent, but his mouth never falters against you. Then, suddenly, his grip shifts—he releases your thighs, and the absence of that bruising hold makes you whimper at the loss. Before you can even complain, his hands are sliding higher, thumbs pressing delicately to either side of your labia.

The breath catches in your throat when he parts you open, spreading the slick skin. He pulls back just enough to look, his mouth hovering, his eyes locked on you, on your most intimate part he needs to see. Adoration softens every line of his face, and the way he drinks in the sight makes you tremble.

“What are you doing? Don't do that… keep going,” you whine, the petulance in your own voice making heat rush to your cheeks, shame curling under the desire. You sound like a begging spoiled child.

He licks his lips, eyes flashing up to yours, caught between guilty and awestruck. “Sorry. I just wanted to see,” there's a very awkward pause, “...wow.” The last whisper is reverent, ragged, and before you can scold him again, his mouth is back on you.

This time he starts lower, licking and sucking at your entrance, his thumbs still holding you open so he can taste every drop. You shudder at the hot, sloppy attention, gasping when he drags his tongue back up and catches your clit again between his lips. The combination makes you arch, your back bowing against the sofa, hips rolling forward to feed him more.

Obscene wet sounds echoing between you as he works. Your body pushes into his mouth again and again, giving in completely while he laps and sucks like he’ll never get enough.

Nothing stops until the pressure inside you finally snaps. Your body seizes against his mouth, your cunt pulsing around his tongue just as you told him to fuck you with it. He does—shoving it as deep as he can, sloppy and relentless, his nose rubbing against your clit, smelling your natural scent that makes him leak inside his pants. The combination has you crying out, thighs trembling around his head, heat spilling over his tongue as he drinks down every second of your release.

It takes everything in you to push him back, gasping, overstimulated, your body still twitching from aftershocks. He resists for a moment, groaning into your folds like he’d happily drown there, but when you tug his hair firmly, he pulls back. Thin threads of saliva and your slick joining his lips to your cunt, he stares up at you like you’re his vice, his drug.

“Wait—please, please, again, again,” he whines with his pretty voice breaking, his face still close enough that his breath fans over your flesh.

You shift on the sofa to glance down at him properly. He’s still moving his hips against nothing, rutting air like a desperate animal. He must be so hard it aches, but he doesn’t reach for himself, doesn’t even think to—his whole world is focused between your thighs. The sight makes you chuckle, a giddy little sound of satisfaction, because you’ve never seen him look so undone.

“Yes,” you breathe, stroking his hair, rewarding him. “Yes, you can do it again.”

The joy that breaks across his face is pure, grabbing your panties, tugging them back over your swollen cunt, covering you again. And he dives in again, pressing his mouth to the damp fabric like it’s his altar, licking and sucking through the soaked cotton as if he can’t bear to let you go bare for too long.

“Weirdo,” you purr while stroking his hair and he starts giving little kisses to your puffy cunt, loving how the soaked fabric feels against his lips.

“Don’t be mean,” he mumbles against you, words muffled by the constant, sloppy way his mouth keeps working over the damp fabric. The vibration of his voice only makes your thighs twitch tighter around his head.

“I’m not…” you coo, tilting your head, watching him like he’s the sweetest, dirtiest thing you’ve ever owned. Then, with a sly grin, you drop the bait. “You know… if you come just from this, I’d let you keep them. You could lick them whenever you want.”

You wink at him, voice dripping with tease, and the effect is instantaneous. He almost chokes on his own breath, groaning into you, eyes squeezing shut as though the promise alone might undo him. His hand jerks downward, clutching himself hard through his jeans, desperate for some kind of hold to keep from blowing too soon.

The sight of him—mouth glued to your cunt, nose pressed into the damp cotton, one hand trembling as it grips himself like a lifeline—makes your chest tighten with wicked delight. He’s so close, you can feel it in every frantic lick, every needy sound he pours into you.

Even at age 17, where magazines covering the latest gossip share about how Aerion Targaryen—second son to one of the most terrifying defense lawyers in the entirety of Westeros—has been caught at another late night party he had no business attending or seen in another fight with some lesser rich kid who will pointedly avoid any question regarding the rumors for the rest of their life.

Paparazzi snap pictures of Aerion with a new girl hanging off his arm every week by age 18, spreading it to every source that will share it publicly. At some point near age nineteen it stops becoming a huge scandal and more of a routine that impresses nobody.

Unless it’s photos of you. Although the average mom won’t bat an eye at yet another photo of you two together, the internet is a different story.

Nobody asks “how do you know one another?” anymore. They haven’t for a very, very long time. Instead, the questions have turned into “do you think they’re secretly together?” and “if they don’t get together true love is DEAD. why aren’t they MARRIED yet?”.

Everyone with a set of eyes can see it. The chemistry between you two is hotter than a dragon’s fire and more than once has something been said about how you’re both attached at the hip. Literally and figuratively, depending on the time.

Mixers were somewhat common for those with more money than they knew what to do with. Three hours of people flaunting the amount of zeros in their bank accounts while draped in finery, plastering smiles onto their lips that were akin to a predator’s looking for weak points to later use. Nobody sane truly enjoyed them, but they all went anyway. Being absent from such an event was its own sort of poor decision, one of which would be gossiped about for a week until something juicier came to light.

You attended, because of course you did. Your parents were there, siblings too. Certain statuses were meant to be upheld and you played your part, no matter how bored you might be.

The Targaryens were expected to make their appearance roughly five minutes from now, which meant that Aerion would be here in thirty. Just enough time for his family to mingle with the crowd, earn some questions of “oh, and where is your second boy?” that would have Maekar scowling and Baelor easily guiding the conversation into something new, and then be considered “fashionably late”. He wouldn’t have showed up at all, if not for you.

Strutting into the expensive event space with some new, pretty thing hanging off his arm and looking far too bright for a man as dark as he, Aerion made his entrance. Nobody directly approached him, but they all greeted him with forced politeness that he replied to with a sharp glance or nothing at all. Everyone had learned early on that he was not a kind man and to try initiating with him directly always wound up in sharp words tearing into their hearts.

Of course, there was some leeway with you. By no means were you an exception to this wordless understanding that everyone had.

However.

When you two made eye contact across the room, the smallest tilt of your head was offered in greeting and something flashed behind Aerion’s eyes. It was nothing that someone could spot, if not for you. You were in the midst of a conversation with some young man who was interested in what your family could offer if he were to capture your heart, so he was attempting to do just that. Charming smiles, warm words that were hollow at the end of it all, and the occasional brush of fingers against yours, all of which you permitted. Not forced yourself into, but allowed because you knew how much playing along was required of you.

Seven Minutes.

Seven minutes passed before you were being interrupted in your conversation with this man you barely remembered the name of. That was exactly how long it took for Aerion to discard the girl on his arm, lazily placating her with a “get yourself a drink n’ have fun”, and then shut down the conversation with this audacious man. He doesn’t even say anything, he just looks at the man with a glare that would make someone drop dead if he had the ability to, and watches as he scrambles off.

“Only one cherry? How disappointing.” There is no formal greeting between you two. Instead, Aerion is pressing a drink into one of your hands and you take it, glass clinking against the rings you chose to adorn your fingers with this evening. You comment on the fact that there’s only one cherry instead of the usual two or three in your drink and it makes an almost-laugh come from the Targaryen. It’s breathy, coming through his nose and one corner of his lips turning upward into something that could be a smile if he tried a little more.

“You’ll survive.” Aerion’s voice is almost flat, save for the undertone of amusement in the back of his throat that most would overlook. You don’t. You kick his expensive loafer with an equally pricey high heel adorning your own. He grins properly, silver hoops littering his ear shining under the dim lighting of the event space, “Ouch.”

The one word of acknowledgment is full of amusement now. You click your tongue in faux annoyance and then shift your stance a little.

Both of you settle into the familiar rhythm of going back and forth, speaking on the conversations you overheard and Aerion listening with a bored expression that conceals the way he’s not taken his eyes off of you since he walked into the room. Your bodies are close enough that most would suspect a relationship if either of you were not who you were. Instead, they do not bat an eye.

One arm is draped on the railing behind you two, thumb just barely touching your upper arm and his whole body is angled toward you, just like that photograph when you were seven. He’s occasionally sipping his own drink with the other hand, right leg pressing into your left as you almost tuck yourself into his side. It’s a familiar stance you two have partaken in so many times before that it’s natural.

“It’s been well over an hour. Shouldn’t you go find your little model?” You inquire about the woman out of politeness more than actual care for her. This isn’t the first time he’s brought someone to a mixer for show, just to abandon them in exchange for you.

“She’s fine. I saw her batting those fake lashes of hers at Baratheon fifteen minutes ago.” Aerion says it as if that means the entirety of the girl he’d brought to this mixer is a problem already solved. It is, in a way. He doesn’t bring people of any real importance to his life here. He selects those that he can get away with ditching if they bore him or, more likely, if you want to leave earlier than the rest of your family.

The rest of the Targaryen household approaches you both slowly, making their rounds through the room and finding you two last. They already know where you guys are going to be and do not rush to greet you.

Aerion watches his family greet you with a mild sneer that stays on his face until they’re gone again. It’s the only way that he can cover up the way it warms him, digging up some traitorous part of his heart which beats only for you. Truthfully, it has been beating for you alone for longer than he has known it not to. He will not address it.

It takes forty-five minutes for everyone to say their “hello”s and “how are you?”s like you weren’t over at their house two days ago, helping the youngest do homework like it was your job to. Daella had texted you her assignment, asking for help on a specific question, and you stopped by. You said you were in the area when she asked why you came over. You were not, but she didn’t have to know that.

Nobody else gets to interact with Aerion’s family, not the way you do. Whatever pick of poison he makes each night will never get a greeting from his family, all of whom actually intend on coming to at least acknowledge your presence. You are part of the family in a way that the others can only dream of.

Free from everyone but Aerion in your immediate vicinity once again, you finish your drink. You set it down on the nearby table, twisting your upper torso to do it without moving away from the short haired Targaryen.

“My car’s parked out front.” No question of “are you ready to go?” or “do you want to leave soon?”, just the statement that spoke a near lifetime together. Aerion chugged the last of his drink and began to walk with you three steps ahead of him. Close enough that nobody would engage with you because that meant engaging with him, but far enough that he wasn’t breathing down your neck.

Exhaling heavily only once you two were outside and the cold air nipped at your face, tension was visibly draining from your form. You two slid into his sleek sports car, wrapped in red and gold with a dragon running along the side of it because of course Aerion Targaryen had to put a dragon on everything he could. It’s what he was, after all.

Aerion drives you both to your penthouse in the city that’s twenty minutes away and neither of you say anything during the car ride. Comfort was found in silence whenever it settled between you, nearly two decades of time spent learning each other and when being quiet was or wasn’t the right choice. He leads the way through the parking garage and up to your living space as if he owns it, flashing his personal key FOB into the correct spots.

Jackets are shrugged off in the foyer, Aeroin’s blazer draped over the living room couch while you neatly put yours on the coatrack. He’s toeing his shoes off at the backside of the couch and leaving them there. Each thing is intentional. It’s how he’s leaving a quiet claim, each article of clothing serving as a piece of himself that is meant to mark.

Everything settles in its place like it belongs there. You can’t tell if you hate it or love it.

Loud shhck’s fill the living room as Aerion slides open your backdoor, glass overlapping with glass. He fishes a cigarette from his pocket and a lighter accompanies it, thumb swiping in a quick movement that has a flame flickering to life.

“You should lock your doors before you leave the house. Someone could break in.” Aerion’s leaning against the balcony railing, metal and glass that stops a person from accidentally falling over forty stories to their death.

“If someone climbs up this high to get to me, I would be more impressed than scared.” You hum, sliding your heels off and joining him. His head tilts toward you and those violet eyes of his are on you again.

“Get taken hostage by an intruder, then. I’ll say ‘I told you so’.” Both of you know that Aerion would tear the very world apart to find you if such a thing occurred. Neither of you say it.

City life makes noise down below, but it’s somewhat quiet so high up, filling the lack of words between you both. You’re looking at each other in this pocket of time where everything ceases to exist save for the cigarette smoke curling between your faces and each other.

One of you moves toward the other, although you’re unsure who does it first. Fingers curl into the side of your hip, cigarette still slotted between two deft fingers and you’ve got your hand on his nape. You’re drawing one another in until your bodies are flush, lips parted and breaths mingling together. The small gap between you both doesn’t close.

“Aerion.” You break the silence first, breathing out the Targaryen’s name in a question of something you’re unsure you want the answer to. He says nothing, but his fingers press harder and so does yours.

Years. Years of this moment playing through your minds and it went nothing like how you thought it would be, but also exactly how you two expected. No huge fight—although it definitely crossed your mind a few times—nor some fit of jealousy. It was a moment of quietness that settled between you both like it had a million times before. Lips press together before anything can break the moment, soft for a whole one second and then you’re trying to devour each other.

Teeth catch lip and bite, certain to bruise the flesh for days. Spit pushes between your mouths, tongues tangling and then separating. You push him against the wall of your balcony and he lets you. Aerion lets you and thinks that he would have nothing else. When you pull away with the need to breathe his eyes are several shades darker than they had been, pupils swallowing the violet.

“Do not,” Aerion is dropping his cigarette onto the concrete ground of the balcony, foot stomping it out without taking his eyes off of you, “kiss me like that if you’re going to pretend it didn’t happen.”

Aerion brings his free hand up to your face and slides his fingers into your hair, gripping the strands tightly so that you cannot back away. You do not want to, either.

“I know.” It’s the only response you give. It does not seem like an adequate response to the demand given, but somehow it is. The demand spoke for deeper feelings than just what was offered. Both of them had orbited one another for so long in one specific way that this kiss was fundamentally tilting the axis in which they sat.

Your name was murmured, blunt nails pressing into one another, and you do not push away. You draw Aerion in again and lick into his mouth, drowning any lingering uncertainty between you two.

The internet explodes when a photo of you kissing at a dinner party gets published a few months later and the Targaryen family is very, very relieved that they don’t have to send some poor girl home in a taxi after being ditched by the second son of Maekar Targaryen.

What were you saying? The sentence is gone. It was right there and now it's dissolving the way everything dissolves down here, like sugar in warm water,.

Better Bobby's fingers have stopped drawing patterns and are just pressing now. Five points of heat on your hip. The hum is in your teeth and behind your eyes and you think—vaguely, dreamily, from too far away—that you should probably finish your thought about Clark's shelving unit.

You turn your head. He's right there. His face inches from yours, those pale eyes half-lidded, watching you with that patient, hungry, endlessly attentive focus.

And you think idly I'll just kiss his cheek. That's all. Just a small thing. A punctuation mark. The kind of casual intimacy you used to have with real Bobby, back when touch was easy, back when you could press your lips to his cheekbone in passing and it meant I'm here and nothing more.

You lean in. Your mouth brushes his cheekbone.

And the world tilts.

Between one heartbeat and the next, between the moment your lips touch his skin and the moment you mean to pull back, there's a shift.

The surroundings stay the same. The change is in him. You feel it through the contact point. Through your mouth on his cheek, a full-body shudder that runs through Better Bobby like a current. His hand moves from your hip to your waist and grips and his head turns, fast, faster than a human head should turn, finding your mouth.

It's not the careful learning kisses from before, when he asked you to teach him how to kiss you properly.

This is... this is the thing that lives underneath Better Bobby.

The thing he keeps leashed and gentle and civilised for you. The thing that unravelled the Smiler in the dark to keep you safe. Except there's no threat now. That intensity is pointed at you.

And it's not trying to hurt you. It's trying to consume you. To crawl inside the kiss and live there. His tongue is in your mouth, his hand settling on the back of your neck and he's pulling you into him with a strength that isn't human. He's not pretending to be right now, and you make a startled sound against his lips and he swallows it. Takes it. Wants more.

You're moving. You don't decide to move. Momentum moves you. He moves you.

Your back hits the wall and you slide down it, the yellow wallpaper rough against your shoulder blades, and then you're on the floor with your legs open and he's in your lap—no.

He's not in your lap. He's around you. Curled over and around you like something serpentine, a thing that doesn't have a skeleton the way humans have skeletons. Better Bobby's body conforms to yours at every point of contact, chest to chest, hip to hip, his thighs bracketing yours, his arms closing around you and it's not an embrace.

It's an enclosure. A perimeter. You're inside Better Bobby the way a heart is inside a chest.

Your hands go to his shoulders. Half pushing, half holding, your fingers digging into muscle that flexes and shifts under his skin in ways that aren't quite anatomically right.

He doesn't notice. Or he doesn't care. His mouth is on yours and then it's not. Then it's on your jaw, your throat, the dip of your neck. And he's not kissing so much as tasting, his lips parted and dragging and his breath coming in these quick, shivery little bursts against your skin.

Fast, animal. The breathing pattern of a creature that's been holding itself back for such a long time and has just now found what it wants.

Because that's what the cheek kiss was. You understand that now, distantly, through the gauze of the hum and the warmth and the overwhelming physicality of him everywhere. Everywhere. Around you and against you, his palm on your nape angling your head back so he can get at the full length of your throat.

The cheek kiss was permission. You touched him. You initiated. And in whatever language Better Bobby's instincts operate in, that translated to: yes. Yes, you can. Yes, I want you to. Go.

And he went.

His nose pushes into the soft space behind your ear. He inhales (deep, shaking, greedy) and makes a sound that comes from below his chest, below his lungs, from whatever furnace drives the entity underneath the skin.

The sound isn't pleasure exactly, it's relief.

The relief of a thing that's been starving and just got its mouth on something warm and tender. He noses down the tendon of your throat to your collarbone and mouths at it. Open and wet and artless.

No technique, no finesse, just contact. As much contact as he can get, and his hips press into yours and his hand on your waist hauls you closer, closer, like the laws of physics are personally inconveniencing him by not allowing you to occupy the same space.

"Bobby—Bobby, slow—"

He makes a sound against your clavicle. Not a word. A vibration. A negation. No. No slow. Had slow. Done with slow. Slow was when I was being careful and now you've kissed me and I don't have to be careful. I need—I need—I need—

God, his hands.

They're everywhere at once.

Your waist, your ribs, your hips, the back of your neck, sliding under the hem of your shirt and pressing flat against the bare skin of your lower back.

Warmth hits you like a drug, a wave, and your head drops back against the wall with a quiet moan and the yellow ceiling swims above you. Better Bobby is nosing up the front of your throat with those quick shallow breaths, scenting you, learning you, his lips catching on your skin with every exhale.

He's not performing.

That's the thing that breaks through the haze. The one clear thought that surfaces through the gauze of strange pleasure: he's not performing.

The gentle Better Bobby, the careful one, the one who plays with your hair and says I've got you, baby. That Bobby is a construction. A deliberate presentation.

The thing that's pressed against you right now, shaking, sucking at your pulse, making that raw sub-vocal sound that vibrates in your ribs—this is what's underneath.

This is the animal under the false skin he's stolen. This is what heard your voice through a wall and wanted and has been wanting every second since. Through every gentle hair-stroke, every patient conversation and every careful, calibrated touch.

He wanted like this. The whole time. This raw, this desperate, this artless, graceless, trembling need that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with a creature that has been alone in the yellow for longer than human loneliness has a name for and has finally, finally found something warm and alive willing to stay.

The wanting is so big it doesn't fit inside the Bobby-shape. It's leaking out. Through his hands and his mouth. Through the harmonic that's gone ragged and unsteady, the hum destabilised by something it wasn't designed to contain.

He pulls back. Just enough to look at you. His eyes are fully black. No pretence now. No Bobby-blueveneer. Just the entity, vast and ancient and desperate. Looking out of a stolen face at the only person it has ever wanted.

"You kissed me," he says. His voice is wrecked. That deep register, broken open, cracking through the cockiness like light through a fracture. "You—you kissed me."

"I kissed your cheek—"

"You kissed me."

Like the distinction doesn't exist. Like any contact, any voluntary touch, any moment where your mouth chose to be on his skin is the same thing. Total. Binary. You touched him or you didn't and you did and that means—

"You want me," he exhales.

He doesn't phrase it like a question. It's a revelation.

His hands are cradling your face now, both hands, his thumbs on your cheekbones, and he's looking at you with those black eyes and the expression on his face is... it's too much.

Too many things at once. Wonder, hunger, tenderness and that dark, possessive satisfaction and underneath all of it, at the very bottom, something so painfully vulnerable it doesn't belong on the face of something this powerful.

Hope.

The ancient thing in the walls is looking at you with hope.

"You want me," he says again. Quieter now. Testing the words. Feeling them in his mouth. "You—not him. Me. You reached for me."

And what are you supposed to say to that?

What are you supposed to say to a creature that has worn loneliness like a second skin for longer than your entire species has existed, that heard you through concrete and plaster and chose to build itself a body just to be close to you? That has been patient, gentle and careful for weeks because it was terrified of scaring you away and has just felt your lips on its cheek and interpreted that as the end of a famine?

You look at him. At the black eyes and the silver earring and the chain and the scar. At the trembling. The hunger.

You put your hand on the back of his neck and pull him in.

He tips towards you. Like gravity.

His mouth is on yours and the sound he makes is not a moan, it's not a growl, it's that entity-harmonic blown wide open. A resonant chord that fills the hallway and the walls. The hum itself. And he's kissing you, shaking, and his hands are everywhere and nowhere.

He's trying to be gentle and failing, trying and failing and giving up and just... taking. Mouth and hands. That impossible warmth flooding through every point of contact and the yellow walls humming around you.