Su-Su-Su-Supernatural

The first time Bambi heard the name Soldier Boy, she was seven years old.

Her mother had the poster on the living room wall—right next to the cross and the family photos and the electric bill that was always past due. He was standing there in his uniform, jaw squared, shield raised, looking like God's personal bodyguard. Her mother would look at it sometimes when she thought Bambi wasn't watching. Looked at it the way some women looked at church—like it was the only thing keeping the ceiling from falling in.

"First superhero this country ever had," her mother would say. Not to Bambi specifically. Just to the room. To the air. To whatever was listening.

Bambi grew up knowing his face better than she knew her own father's.

She never thought she'd meet him.

She never thought she'd marry him.

The meeting with Ashley Barrett happened on a Thursday.

Bambi had been at Vought for two years by then. Two years of nothing. Two years of low-ranked assignments—appearances at mall openings, elementary school visits, a single Vought+ original where she played "Background Supe #3" in a scene that got cut from the final edit. She was on the roster. She had a file. She had a powers assessment that read SKIN WEAPONIZATION — CLASSIFIED and a headshot that nobody looked at.

She was nobody.

That was the point. That was always the point. Being nobody at Vought was safer than being somebody. The somebodies ended up on billboards or in body bags and sometimes both at the same time. Bambi had seen enough to know that visibility was a liability and the best thing she could do for herself was stay small, stay quiet, and stay employed.

So when the email came—Meeting with Ashley Barrett, 3:00 PM, Conference Room 14C—she assumed it was a termination. Or a reassignment. Or one of those things where they told you your Vought+ subscription was being canceled and by the way your health insurance was tied to it.

She showed up in jeans and a white t-shirt. No makeup. Hair pulled back. She figured if they were going to fire her she wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of seeing her try.

Ashley Barrett was already in the room when Bambi walked in.

For a woman who controlled the public image of the most powerful beings on the planet, Ashley looked like she was constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Her hair was perfect. Her nails were perfect. Her smile was a weapon that had been sharpened by decades of corporate warfare. But behind her eyes there was a kind of frantic, twitchy energy that suggested she hadn't slept in three days and was running entirely on iced coffee and pure, uncut anxiety.

"Bambi. Sit. Please." Ashley gestured to a chair that was significantly lower than hers. A power move so obvious it was almost endearing.

Bambi sat.

"You're a low-ranker," Ashley said. Not a question.

"Yes."

"Your power is... skin manipulation. Weaponization. You can remove your skin and—"

"I know what my power is."

Ashley blinked. The smile stayed but something behind it cooled by about fifteen degrees. "Right. Of course. So here's the thing. I have a problem. A very large, very expensive, very public problem. And I think you might be the solution."

Bambi said nothing.

Ashley pulled up a file on her tablet. Turned it around. On the screen was Ben—Soldier Boy—in all his poster-boy glory. But below the photo were headlines. Not the good ones.

SOLDIER BOY: WHAT VOUT ISN'T TELLING YOU THE DARK HISTORY OF AMERICA'S FIRST HEROAGE GAP CONTROVERSY: IS SOLDIER BOY'S IMAGE FADING?

"His numbers are slipping," Ashley said. "Not badly. Not yet. But the internet is doing what the internet does. People are asking questions. Difficult questions. Questions about his past, his temperament, his... suitability as the face of American heroism. We've tried the usual—viral moments, charity appearances, a carefully curated documentary that made him look like a cross between George Washington and a golden retriever. But the narrative is shifting."

She paused. Took a breath. Leaned forward.

"What he needs is humanization. What he needs is to look like a man, not a monument. And the fastest way to do that—trust me, I've run the numbers—is a wife."

The word landed in the room like a brick through a window.

"A wife," Bambi repeated.

"A wife. Young enough to be interesting but old enough to be legal. Pretty enough for the magazines but unknown enough that she doesn't come with her own scandal. Someone who can stand next to him and make him look like a man who has a home and a life and a reason to be gentle."

"And you're asking me."

"I'm telling you. Vought has selected you."

Bambi stared at her. Waited for the punchline. It didn't come.

"Why me?"

Ashley's smile tightened. "Because you're perfect. You're Black—which helps with the diversity optics we've been getting killed on. You're attractive—I'm not flirting with you, I'm stating a fact, your social media following is modest but your engagement rate is insane which tells me people respond to your face. You're a supe which means the public won't question the match. And you're low-ranked enough that you don't have a fan base that will be outraged. You're a blank slate."

"I'm a person."

"You're an asset. In this room, right now, those are the same thing."

Bambi looked at the table. Looked at her hands. Looked at the tiny chip in her nail polish that she'd been meaning to fix for a week.

"What if I say no?"

Ashley's smile didn't waver. But something in the room shifted. The air got heavier. The fluorescent lights hummed a little louder.

"Then you remain a low-ranker. Which means you remain invisible. Which means you remain employed. For now. Vought is... restructuring. Budgets are being evaluated. Rosters are being trimmed. I'm not threatening you, Bambi. I'm just giving you information."

It was a threat. They both knew it.

Bambi thought about her apartment. The one with the broken radiator and the neighbor who played music at 2 AM and the mold in the corner of the bathroom that she kept meaning to report but never did because she was afraid maintenance would find a reason to raise her rent.

She thought about her mother's poster. The one on the wall. The man who looked like God.

She thought about a lot of things.

"When?" she asked.

Ashley's smile widened. It was the smile of a woman who had just closed a deal and was already thinking about the next one.

"Six weeks."

The six weeks were a blur of fittings and meetings and non-disclosure agreements thick enough to stop a bullet.

Bambi was assigned a "wedding coordinator" named Patricia who had the energy of a military general and the aesthetic of a Pinterest board. Patricia handed her a schedule that was color-coded and laminated and had every minute of the next forty-two days accounted for.

Dress fittings. Hair consultations. Makeup trials. Couples therapy—"Not real therapy," Ashley clarified, "just something we can point to and say 'they're working on it.'" Media training. Dance lessons. A nutrition plan that Bambi ignored completely.

She met Ben three times before the wedding.

The first time was at Vought Tower. Ashley brought her to a conference room—different from the first one, bigger, with a table that could seat twenty and a view of the city that made her stomach drop. Ben was already there when she walked in. Sitting at the head of the table with his boots up and a newspaper in his hands like it was 1955 and not the twenty-first century.

He looked up when she entered. Looked at her the way you'd look at a piece of furniture that had just been delivered. Not impressed. Not disappointed. Just... assessing.

"This her?" he said to Ashley. Not to Bambi. To Ashley. Like she wasn't in the room.

"This is Bambi."

He looked at her for a long moment. She looked back. She didn't flinch. She'd spent two years being looked at by people who dismissed her and she'd learned that the best response to being underestimated was to stand exactly where you were and let them underestimate you.

"She's small," he said.

"And you're old," she said. "We all have problems."

Something flickered across his face. Not anger—something more like surprise. Like a dog that had been kicked so many times it forgot that teeth could be used for biting, and then someone showed it how.

Ashley's smile turned rigid. "Okay. Great. Wonderful. You two will have plenty of time to get to know each other."

They didn't.

The second meeting was the dance lesson. A studio in midtown with mirrors on every wall and an instructor named Dmitri who had the patience of a saint and the complexion of a man who had seen too much.

Ben couldn't dance. Not even a little. He moved like a man who'd been frozen in carbonite for forty years and had just been defrosted. His hands were too heavy on her waist. His feet stepped on hers. He smelled like whiskey and old spice and something darker underneath—something that reminded her of the way the air smells before a storm, charged and heavy and waiting.

"Don't step on me," she said.

"Stop moving then."

"I'm not moving. You're just bad at this."

He looked down at her. She looked up at him. In the mirror, they looked like a painting that had been hung crooked—two people who didn't fit together being forced into the same frame.

"I've killed men," he said quietly.

"I can peel my skin off and make it into a blade," she replied. "You wanna compare resumes or you wanna learn to waltz?"

His mouth twitched. That same almost-smile from the first meeting. The one that didn't know if it wanted to be a grin or a grimace.

They didn't speak for the rest of the lesson. But he stopped stepping on her feet.

The third meeting was the rehearsal dinner. Forty people. All Vought. All smiling. All pretending this was normal. Ben sat at the end of the table and drank and didn't look at her once. Bambi sat at the other end and picked at her food and didn't look at him either.

They were a painting of a marriage that hadn't happened yet.

The frame was already cracking.

The dress fight happened on a Tuesday.

Fourteen boxes arrived at Bambi's apartment. Fourteen. She sat on the floor and smoked a cigarette down to the filter while staring at them like they were coffins.

Inside the first box was a dress. High neck. Long sleeves. Lace up to the throat. Modest. Conservative. The kind of dress that said I am small. I am quiet. I am no threat.

The kind of dress Vought would put on a Black woman and call "elegant."

She called Ashley from the bathroom floor.

"I'm not wearing that."

"Bambi, it's about the brand—"

"The brand. Right. The brand that's marrying me off like a breeding sow to a man who was dropping napkins on women before my mother was born."

Silence. The kind that had teeth.

"It's a classic look. Timeless. Jacqueline Kennedy—"

"I don't give a fuck what Jacqueline Kennedy wore. Jacqueline Kennedy wasn't a Black woman being paraded in front of forty million people. I'm not wearing a turtleneck to my own wedding like I'm ashamed of my own collarbones. Send me something else. Something that looks like me. Or I walk down that aisle in a white bikini and let your PR department spin that."

More silence. Longer this time. Then:

"I'll see what I can do."

Bambi won.

She didn't know how. Ashley called it a "creative compromise." The stylist called it "modernizing the aesthetic." Someone in marketing probably wrote a twelve-page memo.

But Bambi knew the truth.

Vought was scared of her.

Not her power. Her mouth. Her refusal to perform on cue. The way she looked at cameras like they were witnesses to something criminal. They gave her the dress because they were afraid of what she'd do without it.

So she wore it.

The dress arrived in fourteen more boxes because Vought didn't understand the concept of subtlety.

The corset was first. Boned. Structured. Ivory silk so pale it was almost silver. She held it up and it caught the light like something that could cut.

The bodice was strapless. Lace climbed across it in floral patterns—vines swallowing stone, flowers blooming on bone. It dipped low in the back, low enough that standing up straight for four hours would become a full-time job.

The skirt was layers of lace and tulle that spilled over her arm like something alive. Too much. Obscene. Perfect.

The veil was in the eleventh box.

She pulled it out and it kept coming. And coming. Cathedral length didn't cover it. This was beyond cathedral. This was a white river that pooled on her apartment floor and kept going until it disappeared under her couch.

She draped it over her arm. It dragged behind her on the ground when she walked to the mirror—two feet of white silk trailing like the ghost of every choice that had led her to this moment.

Look how much space I take up.

Vought wanted her small.

The veil said otherwise.

The thirteenth box held the garter. White lace. Thin band. Written on it in black script that curled like a wound:

MRS. SOLDIER 6 - 17 - 24

Not his real last name. Not hers. A title. A brand. A product placement on her own thigh.

She put it on anyway.

Took a polaroid of it against her brown skin—the lace, the black letters, the edge of her underwear.

Threw it in the trash.

Fished it out.

Put it in her jacket pocket.

She didn't know why.

The morning of the wedding, she didn't sleep.

Her apartment was empty. Everything packed. Everything gone. The walls were bare except for little ghost rectangles where her posters had been and one nail where her mother's cross used to hang. She'd taken the cross with her. She didn't know why about that either.

The hair team arrived at six. Makeup at seven. Stylist at eight. Three hours of hands on her body—pinning, spraying, painting, adjusting. She sat in the chair like a mannequin and let them turn her into something that looked like a bride but felt like an offering.

The corset went on first. They pulled it tight enough that breathing became optional. Then the bodice. Then the skirt, which took two women to arrange so it fell correctly—all that lace and tulle cascading like a waterfall of white noise.

The veil was last. It took both assistants to drape it. They pinned it into her hair—curls that had taken two hours and four tools to create—and it fell from the crown of her head and spilled down her back and pooled on the floor and kept going until it disappeared behind her like a white road leading somewhere she couldn't see.

She looked in the mirror.

And for one terrible, beautiful moment, she didn't recognize herself.

The woman in the mirror was breathtaking. Dark skin glowing against ivory lace. Shoulders bare. Collarbones sharp as glass. The crown on her head like it had grown there. The veil turning her into something biblical—something out of a painting, something that belonged in a museum, not a Vought soundstage.

She looked expensive.

She looked dangerous.

She looked like a trap.

Good, she thought. Let him think I'm the prey.

The venue was a historic estate outside the city. Columns. Chandeliers. White roses everywhere—so many white roses that the air was thick with their scent, sweet and cloying, like perfume sprayed over a wound.

Candles flickered in crystal holders. The string quartet was already playing. The cameras were already rolling—Vought cameras, controlled angles, approved lighting. A livestream crew in the back with a director who had a headset and the expression of a man holding a bomb.

Forty-three million people were watching.

Bambi stepped out of the SUV and the veil dragged on the gravel behind her. Two assistants scrambled to gather it. She didn't wait. She kept walking, the fabric pulling and catching, and she thought: Let it tear. Let them see the dirt.

It didn't tear. Vought had probably paid for reinforced stitching.

The livestream comments scrolled like a waterfall:

she looks incredible why is her dress like that tho that VEIL omg she doesn't look happy is she black? soldier boy's wife is black? vought really said diversity win lmao that dress is inappropriate for a wedding that dress is EVERYTHING MRS. SOLDIER???

She didn't read them. She was too busy walking down a hallway that felt like a throat, walls closing in, candles flickering, and at the end was a set of double doors that opened into a room where forty-three million people were waiting to watch her disappear.

The doors opened.

The string quartet shifted into something slower. Something that sounded like a lullaby for someone who was already gone.

The aisle was long. White roses on both sides. Candles in crystal. The guests—Vought executives, sponsored supes, politicians, people who smiled with their teeth and nothing behind them—stood and turned.

And she walked.

Slow.

Not graceful. Not beautiful. Slow. Like walking through water. Like walking through a dream where your legs don't work right and you know something terrible is at the end but you keep going because stopping isn't an option.

The veil whispered against the floor behind her—a soft hiss of fabric that sounded like a voice saying keep going, keep going, keep going.

At the end of the aisle, Ben stood in his dress uniform.

He looked exactly like the posters. Medal-bedecked. Jaw squared. Hands clasped. He could have been carved from marble if marble could look bored.

Their eyes met for exactly one second.

She looked away first.

Not submission. Self-preservation. Because looking at him was like looking at the sun—she knew it would burn her but some stupid animal part of her brain wanted to stare.

She reached the altar. The officiant—a Vought-approved pastor with a smile like a credit card commercial—beamed at them.

The ceremony began.

The words washed over her like lukewarm water.

Dearly beloved. We are gathered. Union of two souls. Every cliché in the language lined up like little soldiers marching past her ears without stopping.

She stood beside him and didn't look at him. She looked at the cameras. Seven of them. Positioned at different angles to capture every perfect moment. The livestream director was probably having a stroke of joy somewhere in the back.

Ben shifted beside her. She could feel the heat of him. He ran warm—something about the radiation, the serum, whatever they'd pumped into him in the forties. He was a furnace in a suit and she was standing close enough to catch fire.

The vows came.

Ben went first. The Vought scriptwriter had given him something that sounded like a military commendation crossed with a Hallmark card. He read it with the flat cadence of a man who'd given a thousand speeches and felt nothing during any of them.

"Bambi, you are the embodiment of American values—strong, resilient—"

She almost laughed.

Then it was her turn.

The script was in her hands. Crisp paper. Vought letterhead. She looked at it. Looked at the cameras. Looked at Ben.

She smiled.

Gorgeous. Practiced. Warm. The smile that had made the Vought social media team fall in love with her. The smile that said I am so in love to forty-three million people.

"Ben," she said, and her voice was honey and silk. "You are the epitome of the American Dream. You are everything this country aspires to be—strong, fearless, unwavering—"

She leaned in. Slightly. The cameras adjusted. The director zoomed in. The intimate whisper. The tear-jerking moment.

Her lips barely moved.

"—and I just want you to know," she whispered, the smile never wavering, her eyes locked on his, "fuck you."

She pulled back. Blinked. Looked at the cameras.

"—and I promise to stand by your side, today and every day, as your partner and your wife."

The crowd exhaled. Someone dabbed their eyes. Someone in the back said "aww."

The cameras didn't catch it.

None of them caught it.

But Ben did.

Something happened on his face. Not the poster face. Not the Vought face. His eyes darkened. His jaw shifted. The corner of his mouth twitched—not down, not up, just shifted—like a man who'd just seen something unexpected and hadn't decided yet if he liked it.

He didn't look angry.

He looked interested.

And that was worse.

The rings. Platinum. Heavy. Cold. His fit perfectly. Hers didn't—too loose. Another appointment. Another reminder that nothing about this was made for her.

"You may kiss the bride."

Ben turned. One hand on her waist—possessive, heavy, like holding something that belonged to him. The other hand came up to her jaw. Fingers rough. Calloused. He tilted her face up.

The kiss was brief. Tasted like whiskey and something metallic underneath.

But his thumb pressed into the soft skin under her ear. Not hard. Not gentle. Just there. A reminder.

Then he let go. Turned to the crowd. Smiled.

And Bambi stood beside him with her veil pooling at her feet and thought: I'm going to destroy you.

The photos happened in a side room.

A French photographer directed entirely with her hands. She'd shot Vought events before. She knew how to make propaganda look like art.

The first shot: Bambi's hand on Ben's jaw. The veil between them like a white curtain. Her dark eyes. His profile. The lace separating them like a crime scene outline. To the world: romantic. Up close: something else entirely.

The second shot: Ben with the cigar. Someone had handed it to him—he hadn't asked. That classic grin. Bambi beside him in all that lace. He looked like danger. She looked like a ghost. The gray curtains. The white flowers. A Renaissance painting of a hostage situation.

The third shot: him carrying her. Arms under her knees and back. Her legs in white lace hanging over his arm. Her hand on his shoulder. Not holding on. Just... there. A movie still. Evidence.

The fourth shot: the hands. Close-up. His scarred, rough hand over hers. Both wearing rings. Her nails in soft nude. His knuckles bruised from something. The frame was their whole marriage in miniature. Manicured and damaged. Delicate and destroyed.

The fifth shot: black and white. His hand over her face. Almost covering it. Possessive. The cross necklace. The lace bodice. Art. A warning. An album cover for something that would break your heart.

"C'est fini," the photographer said.

It wasn't.

The reception was champagne and handshakes and cameras that never stopped.

Bambi performed. There was no other word. She held his arm. Smiled when she was supposed to. Laughed when she was supposed to. Leaned in when the cameras swung their way.

He called her Doll.

"Smile for 'em, Doll."

She called him Honey.

"Yes, honey. I'm wonderful, honey."

Inside her mouth, her teeth were grinding to dust.

The cake was cut. The dance was had. His hand on her lower back. Her hand on his shoulder. The string quartet playing something slow and sad that everyone called romantic.

Forty-three million people watched them sway.

Nobody saw her nails digging into his shoulder through his jacket.

Nobody saw his grip tightening hard enough to leave marks.

Nobody saw anything real.

At the end of the night, the foyer. The veil gathered and folded and handed off to an assistant who would probably never give it back. The crown in a box. The garter still on her thigh, Mrs. Soldier pressing into her skin with every step.

The SUV pulled up.

Ben got in. Didn't hold the door. Left her standing there in her ruined dress and smudged makeup and Vought's diamonds.

She got in. Sat on the opposite side. As far as she could get.

The car pulled away. The estate shrank. The cameras disappeared. Forty-three million viewers clicked to something else.

In the dark, Ben spoke.

"You said fuck you."

Not a question.

"Did I?"

He didn't laugh. Didn't yell. Just looked at her with eyes that had seen wars and decades and things she couldn't imagine.

"Do it again. Not for the cameras. For me."

She leaned across the seat. Close enough to smell the whiskey and the smoke. Close enough to see the scar tissue under his jaw.

"Fuck. You."

Soft this time. Not a weapon. Not a performance. Just truth in the dark.

Ben looked at her mouth. Looked at her eyes. Looked out the window.

Smiled.

Not the poster smile. Something else. Something that belonged only to the space between them.

"Good. Wouldn't respect you if you didn't."

The car pulled into the underground garage. The engine cut. The silence rushed in like water filling a room.

Bambi opened her door. Her dress caught on the seat. She pulled—heard the rip, didn't care—stepped out onto the concrete in her ruined gown with Mrs. Soldier written on her thigh.

She didn't look back.

But she knew he was following.

He always would be now.

The penthouse was enormous and empty.

Not empty of furniture—there was plenty of that. Leather couches that cost more than her old apartment. A kitchen with marble countertops and appliances she didn't know how to use. Floor-to-ceiling windows showing a city that didn't know her name yet.

Empty of life. Empty of personality. It looked like a showroom. Like a place where people were supposed to live but never did. Everything was cream and white and gray, like someone had decorated a coffin and called it luxury.

Bambi stood in the entryway in her torn wedding dress and looked at the space that was apparently hersnow and felt something cold settle into her chest.

"Bedroom's through there," Ben said from behind her. He was already heading for the bar. Tie loose. Jacket off. Shirt unbuttoned at the collar. He moved through the penthouse like a man who'd lived there forever, which he had—she was the intruder, not him.

She found the bedroom herself. Massive bed. Dark sheets. No personal touches. No photos. No books. Nothing that said a person sleeps here. Just expensive fabric and expensive silence.

She sat on the edge of the bed. Took off her shoes—one had a scuff from the gravel. Stared at the wall. The crown was somewhere in the living room. The garter was still on her thigh. She didn't take it off.

She should take it off.

She didn't.

Ben came in twenty minutes later. Reeking of top-shelf whiskey. Didn't look at her. Pulled off his tie. Unbuttoned his shirt. Got into the other side of the bed.

The mattress didn't dip toward him.

They lay in the dark. Far apart. A canyon of Egyptian cotton between them. She could feel the cold on the space where another body should be but wasn't.

She stared at the ceiling. He stared at the ceiling. The city hummed below them like a machine that never stopped.

Neither of them slept for a long time.

When she finally did, it was with her back to him and her jaw clenched so tight she woke up with a headache and a taste in her mouth like she'd been chewing on steel all night.

The first week was silence.

Not comfortable silence. Not companionable silence. The kind of silence that exists in the aftermath of an explosion when all the noise has died and you're just standing in the rubble waiting for someone to say something.

Ben woke up before her every day. He was already on the couch when she emerged from the bedroom, TV on, something black and white flickering across the screen. There was always something next to him. A glass. A bottle. A small mirror with residue on it. A rotation of vices like a lazy susan of self-destruction.

Bambi made coffee. Stood in the kitchen. Drank it black. Didn't offer him any. He didn't ask.

They didn't eat together. They didn't speak. They existed in the same space like two planets orbiting the same sun but never colliding—close enough to feel each other's gravity, far enough to pretend they were alone.

At night, the bed.

Always the bed. Always far apart. Always the cold space between them. She'd lie on her side, facing away, and listen to him breathe. He breathed heavy. Deep. The breathing of a man who'd been unconscious for forty years and was still catching up on all the air he'd missed.

She hated that she noticed.

The second week, she found the grocery delivery app on the penthouse's tablet. Vought had pre-loaded it with a credit card and a note that said Household essentials — enjoy! with an exclamation point that made her want to throw the tablet through the window.

She ordered food. Real food. Not the room service garbage. Vegetables. Rice. Chicken. Spices. Things she could actually cook with because she refused to exist on takeout and whatever Vought's nutritionist had prescribed.

She cooked for herself. Made her plate. Sat at the kitchen island alone. Ate in silence.

Ben shuffled over to the stove eventually. Looked at what was left. Didn't say thank you. Took the plate back to the couch without a word.

This happened every night.

She made her plate. He ate the leftovers. Neither of them acknowledged it.

She told herself she was cooking for herself.

She was.

Mostly.

The first fight was about the coffee mug.

It was a Tuesday. Three weeks into the marriage. Bambi had found the mug at a thrift store two days after moving in—a cream-colored ceramic thing with a chip on the rim that she'd decided was "character." It was the first thing in the penthouse that was hers. Not Vought's. Not Ben's. Hers.

She came into the kitchen Monday morning and Ben was standing at the counter drinking from it.

"You used my mug."

He looked down at it. Looked at her. "It's a mug."

"It's the only mug I use and you put your mouth on it like an animal."

"Bambi."

"Don't Bambi me. You have ten other mugs in that cabinet. Ten. I counted. And you chose the one with the chip. The one I use every morning. The one that is clearly not yours."

He took another sip. Slowly. Deliberately. Looking at her the entire time.

She lost her mind.

"What is wrong with you? Is this what you do? You just take things? You've been alive for eighty years and you still don't understand the concept of personal property?"

"It's a mug."

"It's not about the mug, you absolute fossil—"

"Then what's it about?"

She stopped. Mouth open. Words caught in her throat like fish in a net.

What was it about?

It was about the mug. It was about the fact that nothing in this penthouse was hers. It was about the fact that her name wasn't on the lease and her face wasn't on the wall and her body wasn't her own and the only thing she had claimed in three weeks was a chipped mug from a thrift store and he had taken that too.

She grabbed the mug out of his hand. Poured the coffee down the sink. Put the mug in the highest cabinet she could reach.

Ben watched all of this with an expression she couldn't read.

"That was petty," he said.

"Good."

She slammed the cabinet. Went back to the bedroom. Didn't come out for three hours.

When she did, the mug was back on the counter. Clean. Next to a fresh pot of coffee.

She didn't say thank you.

He didn't expect her to.

The fights multiplied.

They were never about big things. They were about the microscopic aggravations of sharing space with someone you despised—the toothpaste cap, the thermostat setting, the TV volume, the way he left wet towels on the bathroom floor like a man who'd never had to clean up after himself in his life.

"You left the cap off the toothpaste."

"I didn't."

"Ben I can SEE it from here."

"Then look at something else."

"Who was on the phone?"

"Nobody."

"You smiled. You don't smile at nobody."

"Maybe I'm practicing for the cameras."

"You moved my shoes."

"They were in the way."

"They were in the CLOSET. That's where shoes GO."

Small wars. Tiny battles. Skirmishes fought over nothing because the real war—the one about control and autonomy and the fact that neither of them had chosen this—was too big to look at directly.

And then.

Silence.

The worst part.

The silence was worse than the fighting because in the silence she could almost pretend she was alone. And in the silence he could almost pretend he didn't notice her. And they both knew neither of those things was true anymore.

She washed the dishes. He watched TV. The penthouse was enormous and somehow they were always in each other's orbit—passing in hallways, reaching for the same cabinet, existing in each other's peripheral vision like two magnets that couldn't decide if they wanted to attract or repel.

The first public appearance was three weeks after the wedding. A Vought gala. Red carpet. Cameras. The whole machine.

Bambi stood in the bedroom in a dress that cost more than her mother made in a year—black this time, off-the-shoulder, with a slit that climbed her thigh like a question mark. The stylist had chosen it. Vought had approved it. Bambi had looked in the mirror and thought: Weapon.

Ben was in the living room. Suit. Tie. Hair slicked back. He looked like the posters again—all sharp edges and American confidence.

She walked out and he looked up from his phone and something happened on his face. A flicker. A micro-expression that was there and gone before she could name it.

"What?" she said.

"Nothing. Let's go."

The car ride was silent. But different from the penthouse silence. This silence had a purpose. This silence was a dress rehearsal.

"Remember," Ben said, not looking at her, "when we get out, you're on my arm. You smile. You laugh at my jokes. You look at me like I hung the moon."

"I know how to perform."

"I know you do. Just making sure."

"I don't need you to make sure of anything."

He looked at her then. In the back of the car with the partition up and the city sliding past the tinted windows.

"You need me to make sure of everything," he said. "That's what this is."

She wanted to claw his eyes out.

She smiled instead. Practiced it. Warm and soft and a little bit shy.

"Like that?" she asked sweetly.

His jaw tightened. "Perfect."

The red carpet was a slaughterhouse dressed as a party.

Cameras. Flashbulbs. A wall of sound that hit her like a physical force. People screaming names—not hers, mostly, but some. Bambi! Bambi! Over here! Look this way!

Ben's hand found the small of her back. Warm. Heavy. Possessive. He steered her forward like a ship through a storm and she let him because that was the choreography.

They stopped for photos. He stood behind her. Both hands on her waist. Chin near her shoulder. She tilted her head back against him and smiled and the cameras ate it alive.

"Soldier Boy and his bride!" someone shouted.

"You guys look amazing!"

"Bambi, how's married life?"

"Wonderful," she said, and her voice was warm honey. "He's wonderful."

Ben's hands tightened on her waist. A fraction. Just enough for her to feel it.

Inside her head, she was screaming.

On her face, she was glowing.

The interviews were worse.

A Vought correspondent—blonde, perky, teeth like a tile floor—sat across from them on a plush couch and asked questions that had been pre-approved by three different departments.

"So, Bambi, what's it like being married to a living legend?"

It's like being buried alive in a very nice coffin.

"It's a dream," she said. "He's everything I imagined and more."

"And Ben, how did you know she was the one?"

Ben looked at her. Actually looked at her. And for a second—just a second—something real passed across his face. Something confused. Something almost vulnerable.

"She's not afraid of me," he said.

The correspondent blinked. "That's... that's so romantic."

Bambi's heart did something strange in her chest. A stutter. A skip. She covered it with a laugh that came out more genuine than she intended.

"He's incorrigible," she said, and touched his arm, and smiled, and hated herself for the half-second where she meant it.

The pattern established itself.

Cameras on: perfect couple. Hand on waist. Head on shoulder. Doll and Sweetheart and Yes, honey. Photos that looked like movie stills. Headlines that said GOALS and COUPLE OF THE YEAR and SOLDIER BOY AND HIS BRIDE REDEFINE AMERICAN LOVE.

Cameras off: silence. Distance. The cold canyon of the bed. The separate plates. The small wars over nothing.

Two lives. One public. One private. Neither real.

It happened a month and a half in.

The trigger was stupid. The trigger was always stupid. He'd come home late—later than usual, which was saying something—and he'd brought the smell of perfume with him. Not her perfume. Something floral. Something sweet. Something that clung to his jacket like an accusation.

She didn't ask where he'd been.

She asked about the jacket.

"You smell like a department store threw up on you."

He didn't look up from the TV. "Was at a thing."

"A thing."

"A Vought thing."

"A Vought thing that required someone else's perfume on your jacket?"

He looked at her then. Slow. The way a predator looks at something that's making noise it shouldn't be making.

"It's not what you think."

"You don't know what I think."

"I know what you're acting like. And it's not cute."

"Not cute." She laughed. It was an ugly sound. Sharp enough to cut glass. "You're right, Ben. None of this is cute. None of this is romantic. I'm a prop. I'm a PR strategy with a pulse. And you're out at 'things' that leave other women's smell on your clothes and I'm supposed to what—wait up? Play nice? Fix your plate and smile?"

"I didn't ask you to fix my plate."

"No. You just eat it. Every night. Without a word. Like I'm your fucking maid."

"You're not my maid. You're my—"

"Your what? Say it. Finish the sentence. I'm your what, Ben?"

He stood up. She stood up. The distance between them shrank to nothing and suddenly they were in each other's faces and the air was electric with something that had been building for six weeks.

"You're my wife," he said. Low. Dangerous. The voice that wasn't for cameras. The voice that had ordered men into battle and watched them die.

"I'm Vought's wife," she corrected. "Not yours. You don't get to claim me like a fucking trophy."

"I can claim whatever I want."

"Try it."

He moved fast. Faster than she expected. One hand on her waist, the other gripping her jaw, and he was backing her toward the wall and she was letting him—no, she was pushing back, shoving at his chest, nails digging into the fabric of his shirt—

"Get off me—"

"Make me."

She ripped her skin.

Not all of it. Just a strip from her forearm—a long, thin ribbon of dark brown skin that peeled away clean and hardened in her hand like it had been baked in a kiln. A blade. Curved. Sharp enough to cut steel.

She pressed it to his throat.

They both froze.

The penthouse was silent except for their breathing. His hand still on her jaw. Her blade at his throat. Two animals who had just realized they were both dangerous.

"Move," she said.

He didn't move.

He looked at the blade. Looked at her arm where the skin was already regenerating—pink and raw and new. Looked at her eyes.

"You're beautiful when you're angry," he said.

"Say that again and I'll open your neck."

"I said you're beautiful."

She pressed the blade closer. A bead of red appeared on his skin. He didn't flinch.

"That's the thing about you," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Everyone else is scared of me. You're not. Everyone else bows. You bite. You're the first interesting thing that's happened to me in eighty years and you're holding a knife to my throat and I'm more turned on than I've been since 1944."

She stared at him.

He stared back.

The blade trembled. Not from weakness. From something else. Something she didn't want to name.

"You're insane," she whispered.

"Probably. But so are you. Otherwise you would've cut me by now."

She hadn't cut him.

She'd had the chance. The blade was at his throat. One motion and she could end this—end the marriage, end the contract, end the whole performance. Vought would survive. They always did.

But she didn't cut him.

And the reason she didn't cut him was the same reason she'd fished that polaroid out of the trash and the same reason she'd noticed how he liked his food seasoned and the same reason she lay in bed at night counting his breaths instead of sleeping.

She dropped the blade. It hit the floor with a sound like a bell and reverted to skin—floppy, lifeless, disgusting—and she was so angry at herself for dropping it that the anger had nowhere to go but out.

"Fuck you," she said. "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you—"

And then she was crying.

Not delicate crying. Not cinematic crying. Ugly crying. The kind that comes from somewhere deep and primal and refuses to be controlled. Sobs that wracked her whole body and made her throat raw and her eyes swell and her nose run.

She slid down the wall. Sat on the floor. Pulled her knees to her chest. Cried into her own arms like she was seven years old again and the world was too big and too loud and too much.

Ben stood over her for a moment.

Then he sat down.

Not next to her. Across from her. Close enough to touch. Not touching.

He didn't say it's okay because it wasn't.

He didn't say don't cry because she couldn't help it.

He didn't say I'm sorry because he wasn't.

He just sat there. On the floor of his own penthouse. In his thousand-dollar suit. With another woman's perfume still on his jacket. And he waited.

When her sobs started to slow—when the river became a trickle and the trickle became a hiccup—she looked at him through swollen eyes.

"I hate you," she said. Her voice was wrecked. Sandpaper and broken glass.

"I know."

"I hate this. I hate this apartment. I hate that dress. I hate that garter. I hate that my name isn't even on anything. I hate that I cook for you and I hate that you eat it and I hate that you don't say thank you and I hate that I want you to say thank you—"

"I know."

"I hate that I dropped the blade."

Something shifted in his face.

"Come here," he said.

"No."

"Bambi."

"I said no."

He didn't grab her. Didn't force her. He just opened his arms. Left them there. An invitation, not a demand. A door, not a lock.

She stared at those arms. At the hands that had been on her jaw thirty seconds ago. At the chest that still smelled like someone else's perfume.

And she collapsed into them.

Not gracefully. Not beautifully. She fell forward like a building coming down and he caught her and pulled her into his lap and her face pressed into his neck and she cried again—softer now, quieter, the aftershocks of the earthquake—and his arms went around her and held her tight.

Too tight. Almost painful. But that was the point. That was always the point.

His hand found the back of her head. Pressed her face deeper into his neck. His other arm wrapped around her waist like a vice.

"Shut up," he murmured into her hair. "You're fine."

"I'm not fine."

"You're fine. Breathe."

"I can't breathe, you're squeezing too hard—"

"Good."

She laughed. It came out wet and broken and wrong, but it was a laugh. The first real one she'd given him that wasn't for cameras.

They sat on the floor for a long time.

Her crying stopped eventually. The apartment was quiet. The TV was still on, casting blue light across the ceiling. Some black-and-white movie neither of them was watching.

She should pull away. She knew she should. This was weakness. This was surrender. This was everything she'd promised herself she wouldn't be.

She didn't pull away.

His hand was in her hair. Not gentle—Ben didn't do gentle. But steady. Present. Like an anchor that didn't know it was keeping a ship from drowning.

"You smell like her," she murmured against his neck.

"I know."

"It's making me sick."

"Then don't smell me."

She pulled back. Looked at him. His face was unreadable but his eyes weren't. His eyes said something his mouth never would.

She stood up. Held out her hand.

He took it.

They went to the bathroom. She turned on the shower—too hot, almost scalding—and stripped off her clothes without looking at him. He stripped off his. The jacket with the perfume on it hit the tile floor like a dead thing.

The shower was too small for both of them. They had to stand close. Closer than either of them wanted. She washed her hair and he stood behind her and the water ran between them like a curtain.

She turned around. Looked up at him. Water streaming down both of them. His eyes on hers. His hands at his sides. Not touching.

"Do it again," she said.

"Do what?"

"Look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like I'm the only person in the room."

He didn't answer. But his hand came up and his thumb traced the line of her jaw—slow, deliberate, like he was reading something written in braille—and her eyes fluttered shut and she hated herself for it.

They didn't have sex that night. That would come later. That would become the thing—the cycle, the addiction, the holy prayer and the unforgivable sin. But not that night.

That night they just stood in the water until it ran cold and then they got out and dried off in silence and went to bed.

The canyon was smaller.

Not gone. Just smaller.

She lay on her side. He lay on his. Their backs were to each other but their feet were touching. Just barely. Just enough.

It was the first night she slept through the whole thing.

It happened two weeks after the blade incident.

The fight was about nothing. The thermostat. Or the dishes. Or the fact that he'd left the cap off the toothpaste again after she'd asked him not to four hundred times. The specifics dissolved the moment his hands were on her.

She was in his face. Finger in his chest. Voice climbing toward a register that would make the walls shake.

"You don't listen. You never listen. You just do whatever you want because you've been alive for eighty years and the world has always let you—"

She shoved him. Both hands on his chest. He didn't move. Not an inch.

Something snapped in her eyes. Or maybe it un-snapped. Maybe the thing that had been holding her together finally let go.

She grabbed his shirt. Pulled him down to her level.

"Fuck you," she said. Not whispering this time. Not for cameras. Just saying it. Saying it the way you say hello or good morning or I love you. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Fuck you forever."

And then she kissed him.

Not a wedding kiss. Not a camera kiss. A kiss like a fight. Teeth and tongue and his hands suddenly on her waist and her hands in his hair and the sound she made when he lifted her and set her on the counter like she weighed nothing—

She bit his lip. Hard. Tasted copper. He growled against her mouth—a sound that came from somewhere deep in his chest, somewhere primal—and his hands gripped her thighs and pulled them apart so he could step between them.

"Say it again," he said against her mouth.

"Fuck you."

"Again."

"Fuck. You. Forever."

He yanked her off the counter. She wrapped her legs around him. Her back hit the hallway wall hard enough to rattle the frames and she gasped—not from pain, from the sheer force of him, the immovable object that he was, the way he held her like she was nothing and everything at the same time.

He kissed her neck. Not gently. Teeth and tongue and suction that would leave marks she'd have to explain away with makeup. She bit back—sank her teeth into the junction of his neck and shoulder hard enough that she felt the skin give, hard enough that he hissed through his teeth and his grip on her thighs tightened to bruising.

Her head fell back against the wall and her fingers dug into his shoulders and she was already wet—had been since the moment he'd grabbed her jaw in that first real fight, maybe before that, maybe since the wedding, maybe since the day Ashley Barrett said her name in that conference room.

They didn't make it to the bedroom.

The hallway wall first. Then the floor—literally the floor, the cold hardwood with the rug shoved aside—and then he was on top of her and she was pulling at his belt and he was tearing her shirt open and the sound of fabric ripping was so loud in the quiet penthouse that it echoed.

He didn't ask. She didn't want him to. There was no is this okay or can I—there was just the raw, brutal physics of two people who'd been circling each other for two months finally colliding.

He pushed into her and she arched off the floor and her nails carved lines down his back that would take days to heal. Not scratches—welts. Deep, angry red lines that beaded with blood where she'd broken skin. He hissed but didn't stop. If anything, he went harder.

He was big—too big, almost, the kind of stretch that bordered on pain—and she was so wet it didn't matter, her body had been ready for this before her brain had admitted it.

"Look at me," he said.

She kept her eyes closed.

"I said look at me, Bambi."

She opened them. His face above hers. Jaw tight. Eyes dark. The look of a man who was barely holding on to something and she was the thing he was holding on to.

He started to move.

Not slow. Not gentle. Deep and relentless and punishing, each thrust driving the air out of her lungs, each one a sentence in a conversation they'd been having with their fists for weeks. She wrapped her legs around him and pulled him deeper and he groaned—actually groaned, a sound she'd never heard him make, raw and wrecked—and she felt it vibrate through his chest into hers.

"Say my name," he said.

"No."

"Say it."

"Make me."

His hand went to her throat.

Not squeezing. Just there. A weight. A presence. A promise. His fingers wrapped around the column of her neck and her brain did something it had never done before.

It went quiet.

The screaming—the internal screaming that had been running since the day she was born, since the day her father left, since the day Vought put a ring on her finger—went silent. The ceiling got blurry. The edges of the room softened. The noise dissolved.

And his name came out of her mouth like a prayer she didn't know she'd been holding.

"Ben..."

"Not good enough," he said, and his hand tightened—just enough, just the right amount—and her eyes rolled back and her mouth opened and the world narrowed to the pressure on her throat and the fullness inside her and the impossible, unbearable heat building at the base of her spine.

"I'm sorry," she heard herself say. Distant. Far away. Like someone else was talking. "I'm sorry, Ben. I'm sorry. I'm sorry—"

She didn't know where it came from. Someplace deep. Someplace she didn't have a map to. The apology wasn't for the fight. It wasn't for the thermostat or the dishes or any of the small stupid things. It was for everything. For hating him. For needing him. For not being able to tell the difference anymore.

He let go of her throat.

She gasped—air rushing back in, the world rushing back in—and then his hand was between her legs and his thumb was doing something precise and devastating and she broke apart underneath him with his name on her lips and tears running down her temples into her hair.

He followed. Buried deep. Forehead pressed against hers. Breathing hard. His whole body shaking with the effort of holding himself up.

They stayed like that for a long moment. Him inside her. Her legs around him. The cold floor beneath them. The ruined rug. The torn shirt. The blood on his back.

He pulled out. Rolled off. Lay on his back beside her on the hardwood.

They stared at the ceiling.

"That was—" she started.

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't make it into something it's not."

She turned her head. Looked at him. His profile in the dim light. The scar tissue. The jaw. The barely perceptible rise and fall of his chest.

"And what is it?" she asked.

He didn't answer.

He stood up. Held out his hand. She took it. He pulled her to her feet and led her to the bedroom—not roughly, not gently, just with purpose—and they fell onto the bed and he was inside her again within minutes and this time it was slower but no less intense and she came again with his hand on her throat and his mouth against her ear saying things that weren't quite words.

It went on for hours.

Not because it was romantic. Because neither of them would tap out first. Because surrendering meant losing and losing to each other was worse than losing to anyone else.

He took her from behind with her face pressed into the pillows and one hand fisted in her hair. Not holding it gently—pulling. Wrenching her head back so her throat was exposed, forcing her spine into an arch that made every thrust hit deeper. She pushed back against him, met him stroke for stroke, reached between her own legs and touched herself while he watched over her shoulder and said "good girl" in that low gravel voice and she came so hard she saw white.

He pinned her wrists above her head with one hand—the strength differential so obscene it made her dizzy—and fucked her slow and deep while she begged him not to stop and hated herself for begging and couldn't stop begging.

She rode him in the gray light of 3 AM, her hands flat on his chest, his hands on her hips, guiding her, controlling the pace even from below. She leaned down and kissed him and it was different this time—slower, softer, almost tender—and they both felt the difference and neither of them acknowledged it.

When it finally stopped, they lay in the wreckage. Ruined sheets. Broken headboard—she didn't even know when that had happened. The room looked like a crime scene.

She was crying. Quiet tears sliding down her temples into her hair. Her throat was raw. Her body was sore in places she didn't know could be sore.

His arm was draped over her. Heavy. Warm. Not moving.

She didn't move it.

The cycle solidified.

It wasn't every night. It wasn't even every week. But it was consistent. A rhythm. A heartbeat. The terrible pulse of their marriage.

The fight. Small trigger. Big explosion. Throwing things. Screaming. "Fuck you forever." The shift. The physical turn. Walls. Hands. The anger transforming into something else—something with teeth and heat and a hunger that had nothing to do with food. The surrender. His hand on her throat. The ceiling blurring. Her brain going quiet. "I'm sorry, Ben. I'm sorry. I'm sorry—" The silence. Heavy breathing. His arm over her. Neither of them speaking. Neither of them moving. Morning. The reset. She made coffee. He drank from his own mug. The fight wasn't mentioned. The sex wasn't mentioned. The tears weren't mentioned. It was like it never happened.

Until it happened again.

And again.

And again.

The third time it happened, she was on her knees.

Not because he told her to. Because she wanted to. Because the fight had been particularly vicious—he'd said something about her mother, she'd thrown a lamp at his head, he'd caught it out of the air like it was a baseball—and the rage had transmuted into something that landed her on the floor in front of him with her hands on his belt.

She looked up at him. He looked down at her. Neither of them spoke.

She took him in her mouth and his hand went to her hair—not pushing, not pulling, just holding—and she set a pace that was slow and deliberate and designed to make him lose control before she did.

She started at the tip. Swirled her tongue around the head, slow and lazy, like she had all the time in the world. He was already hard—had been since the lamp, probably before that, probably since she'd started screaming—and he fit heavy in her mouth, pressing against her tongue, tasting like salt and skin.

She took him deeper. Held him there. Let her throat adjust to the fullness. His fingers twitched in her hair but he didn't push. Didn't pull. Just held on like she was something he was afraid to drop.

She pulled back slowly. Let him almost leave her mouth. Then took him deep again. Set up a rhythm that was torture—deliberate, devastating, designed to undo him one stroke at a time. She looked up at him through her lashes. His jaw was tight. His eyes were half-closed. His chest was rising and falling faster than usual.

She hummed against him. Just barely. Just enough that he felt the vibration.

"Fuck—" The word broke out of him like it had been forced.

She smiled around him. Kept going. Her hand came up to cup him, stroking what her mouth couldn't reach, twisting on the upstroke the way she'd learned he liked even though she'd never admit she'd been paying attention.

His fingers tightened in her hair. Not pulling. Just tighter. His hips jerked forward once—just once, involuntary—and she took him deeper in response and that was it.

He came with a sound that was almost a growl, low and rough and completely unguarded. His whole body went rigid. His hand fisted in her hair. She swallowed and kept her mouth on him until the last shudder passed through him and then she pulled back slowly, letting him see her lips still wrapped around him, her eyes still on his face.

His eyes were closed. His jaw was tight. For a moment—just a moment—he looked completely undone. Like something that had been wound too tight for too long and had finally been allowed to release.

She stood up. Wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Walked to the bathroom.

By the time she came out, he was on the bed waiting for her. And the cycle continued.

The fifth time, she was on top.

She liked it better that way. Not because it was gentler—it wasn't—but because it gave her the illusion of control. She could set the pace. She could lean down and bite his lip when she wanted. She could slow down when he wanted to go fast and speed up when he wanted to slow down and drive him absolutely out of his mind.

She sank down onto him slowly. Deliberately. Let herself feel every inch—the stretch, the fullness, the way he filled her so completely that she had to take a breath to adjust. Her hands were flat on his chest. His hands were on her hips. Fingers digging in hard enough that she knew there'd be bruises tomorrow.

She started to move. Slow at first. Rolling her hips in a lazy circle that made him suck in a breath through his teeth. She watched his face. Watched him try to stay in control. Watched him fail.

"You're doing that on purpose," he said through gritted teeth.

"Doing what?" she asked innocently. Rolling her hips again. Slower this time. Grinding down against him so that her clit pressed against his pelvic bone and the friction sent a spark up her spine.

"You know exactly what you're doing."

"I really don't."

She did it again. Slower. Tighter. She clenched around him—just once, just enough—and his eyes fluttered shut and his grip on her hips got bruisingly tight.

She leaned down. Bit his earlobe. Whispered: "You were saying?"

He flipped her.

One motion. One hand on her hip, one on her shoulder, and she was on her back and he was above her and the illusion of control evaporated like smoke.

"Cheater," she breathed.

"Winner," he corrected.

He hooked one of her legs over his shoulder. Bent her almost in half. And he proceeded to fuck her so thoroughly that she forgot her own name, forgot the fight, forgot everything except his hand finding its way to her throat and the ceiling going blurry and the words "I'm sorry, Ben" falling out of her mouth like pennies into a well.

He kept her leg pinned. The angle was devastating—deeper than before, hitting something inside her that made her see stars every time he bottomed out. She couldn't move. Could only take it. Could only dig her nails into his forearms and let the sounds fall out of her mouth without permission.

"Say it again," he said, and his hand was on her throat—not squeezing, just resting, just that constant, maddening pressure that turned her brain to static.

"I'm sorry, Ben—"

"Again."

"I'm sorry—I'm sorry—"

He let go of her throat and pinched her nipple instead—hard, twisting—and she came so suddenly and so violently that her whole body locked up and her vision went white at the edges and she made a sound that didn't even sound human.

He didn't stop. Kept going through it. Prolonged it. Made her ride the wave until she was begging him to stop and begging him not to stop in the same breath.

When he finally came, he buried himself so deep she thought she might split in half and she felt it—hot and pulsing—and she came again just from that, just from the feeling of him filling her up, and she cried out his name like it was the only word left in the English language.

She figured out the jealousy by accident.

Or maybe by instinct. Bambi had always been good at finding weaknesses—hers, other people's, it didn't matter. A survival skill honed in a world that rewarded soft women with hard consequences.

The first time was at a Vought gala. A newer supe—young, male, pretty in that way Vought liked, all cheekbones and manufactured vulnerability—was assigned to stand near her during the cocktail hour. Network placement. Get the two young supes in a frame together. Generate some buzz.

His name was something forgettable. Tyler? Trevor? It didn't matter. What mattered was that he laughed at something she said. Actually laughed. Not the performative chuckle of a Vought event but a real one, surprised out of him, and his hand touched her arm—lightly, briefly, the way you'd touch someone you were just getting to know—and Bambi felt it before she saw it.

The shift in the room's energy.

She looked up.

Ben was across the room. Talking to some senator. Drink in hand. Not looking at her.

Except he was. Through the reflection in the window behind the senator. Looking at her. Looking at the hand on her arm.

His jaw was tight.

She felt it in her chest. A spark. A flare. Something hot and dangerous that had no business feeling as good as it did.

She laughed louder. Leaned closer to the forgettable supe. Touched his shoulder.

When Ben appeared at her side five minutes later, his hand was on her waist so tight she'd have bruises in the morning.

"Time to go," he said.

"But the—"

"Now, Doll."

The drive home was silent. The elevator ride was silent. The moment the penthouse door closed, it wasn't silent anymore.

He had her against the wall before she could drop her clutch.

"Who the fuck was that?"

"A supe. You know his name."

"I don't give a shit about his name. Why was his hand on you?"

"Because we were talking. That's what people do at galas. They talk. They touch arms. It's called social—"

He kissed her. Hard. Punishing. The kind of kiss that was actually a fight with different weapons.

She kissed back. Bit his lip. Tasted copper. He growled—that sound, that fucking sound—and his hands were under her dress and her back was against the wall and she was already wet and she hated herself for it.

He pushed her dress up. Pulled her underwear to the side. Not even taking them off—just shoving the fabric aside like he couldn't wait, like he couldn't bear the extra three seconds—and he was inside her and she gasped and her head fell back and hit the wall and she didn't care.

"Tell me," he said, thrusting into her with a force that made the pictures rattle. "Tell me you're mine."

"I'm not yours. I'm Vought's. You said so yourself."

"Tell me."

"No."

His hand went to her throat. Squeezed. The ceiling blurred. The world softened.

"Tell me," he said again. Lower. Darker.

"I'm yours," she whispered. The words tasting like poison and honey at the same time. "I'm yours, Ben. I'm yours."

He let go. She gasped. And then he fucked her so hard and so deep that she forgot her own name, forgot the forgettable supe, forgot everything except the fullness and the pressure and the way he said "mine"against her ear like it was a swear word and a prayer at the same time.

Afterward, lying in the ruins of the bed, she stared at the ceiling and thought: So that's how it works.

Ben figured it out too.

He wasn't stupid. Slow about emotional things, maybe. Eighty years of emotional stagnation will do that. But not stupid.

A week after the gala, he came home from a meeting and mentioned—casually, deliberately, with the precision of a man planting a bomb—that he'd met with a female supe. Someone new. Someone Vought was "testing" as a potential co-star for his next project.

"She's got a good power set," he said, pouring a drink. Not looking at Bambi. "Strong. Fast. Good for action scenes."

Bambi was at the stove. Stirring something that didn't need stirring.

"That's nice for her."

"Vought thinks she's got a good look too. Classic. The kind of face that plays well in Middle America."

The spoon stopped.

"That's great, Ben. Really. Good for her."

He glanced at her. Just a glance. But he saw it—the tension in her shoulders, the white of her knuckles on the spoon handle, the way her jaw had set like concrete.

He smiled. Took his drink. Went to the couch.

That night, she picked a fight about the remote. Then about the volume. Then about the fact that he breathed too loud.

He let her rage for exactly twelve minutes before he caught her wrists and pinned them above her head and the cycle started again.

And this time, when she said "I'm sorry, Ben," she meant it more than she ever had.

The jealousy became their currency.

They weaponized it. Refined it. Turned it into an art form.

Bambi wore something low-cut to a press junket and laughed at every male interviewer's jokes. Ben mentioned in an interview that a certain actress had "really connected with the character" during a screen test. Bambi "accidentally" liked a photo of a male model on her public Instagram. Ben brought home a jacket that smelled like someone else's perfume—whether it actually did or not, Bambi could never tell, and that was the point.

Each act of jealousy was a match. Each fight was the fuse. Each time the cycle ran its course, the explosion was bigger, louder, more devastating.

They were destroying each other in the most intimate way possible.

And they couldn't stop.

Six months in, the jealousy peaked.

Bambi had pushed too far. She knew it the moment the words left her mouth at the after-party—laughing too loud with her hand on some actor's thigh, leaning in too close, letting Ben see all of it from across the room. She'd wanted him to drag her out. She'd wanted the fight.

She got it.

The penthouse door barely closed before he was on her. Not the wall this time. The couch. He sat down and pulled her across his lap before she could process what was happening.

"What the fuck—"

"You wanted my attention." His voice was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that preceded earthquakes. "You've got it."

He flipped her skirt up. Yanked her underwear down to her thighs. His palm connected with her ass before she could brace for it.

The sound cracked through the penthouse like a gunshot.

She gasped. More from shock than pain—though there was pain, a sharp stinging heat that bloomed across her skin.

"You think that's funny?" Another one. Harder. Her body jerked forward over his knees. "Flirting with him in front of me? Letting him touch you?"

"It was just talking—"

Crack.

"That wasn't talking. That was you being a brat." Another. And another. Rhythmic now. Punishing. Each one harder than the last until the sting blurred into a deep, throbbing heat that made her eyes water.

She tried to twist away. His hand pressed flat against the small of her back, pinning her. Immovable.

"Stop—"

"No." Crack. "You wanted this." Crack. "You've been wanting this all night." Crack. "Wanted me to come get you."

Her hands fisted in the couch cushions. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of crying. She wouldn't. Her skin was on fire. She could feel the heat radiating off her ass, could feel the marks forming, and he wasn't stopping.

"Look at you," he said, and his voice had dropped into that low, dark register that made her stomach clench. "So pretty when you're being disciplined. Such a good little wife. Following me around like a lost dog all night, begging for my attention."

"I wasn't begging—"

Crack. Hard enough to make her yelp.

"Weren't you?" His hand came down again, lingered this time, pressing into the hot, tender skin. She squirmed and he held her tighter. "You're so brave, Bambi. Pushing boundaries you can't handle. It's almost cute."

"Fuck you—"

He stopped. His hand rested on her ass, heavy and hot. She was breathing hard. Her skin was burning. She could feel the wetness between her legs and she hated herself for it, hated that the spanking had done exactly what he'd known it would do.

He flipped her over. Pulled her up so she was straddling him on the couch. Her skirt was still around her waist. Her underwear was still around her thighs. She was flushed and furious and so turned on she could barely think straight.

She looked at him. His eyes were dark. Amused. Arrogant.

"I hate you," she breathed.

"I know." He reached up and brushed a thumb across her cheek. Mocking tenderness. "But you're so pretty when you're mad."

She snapped.

Her hands went to his throat. Not gently. She squeezed—actually squeezed, hard enough that his pulse hammered against her palms. She leaned in close, her face inches from his.

"I could kill you," she hissed.

His lips twitched. He didn't try to remove her hands. He just looked at her with that infuriating, patient expression.

"But you won't."

"Try me."

He bucked his hips up. One sudden motion that sent her sprawling forward. Her hands slipped from his throat. In a second, he had her flipped, her back against the couch cushions, him above her.

"Nice try," he said. And then he was inside her.

No warning. No preamble. Just the full, brutal length of him in one stroke that punched the air out of her lungs. She was so wet from the spanking that he slid in easily, but the stretch was still overwhelming—too much, too fast, too deep.

He didn't give her time to adjust. He started fucking her with a rhythm that was purely punitive. Hard, deep strokes that shoved her into the cushions, that made the couch scrape against the floor with every thrust.

"This what you wanted?" he said, gripping her jaw, forcing her to look at him. "Wanted me to drag you home and remind you who you belong to?"

She couldn't answer. She could barely breathe. Every thrust hit something deep inside her that made her vision pulse white at the edges. Her hands grabbed at his shoulders, his back, his arms—anything to anchor herself.

"Say it." His hand found her throat again. Not squeezing. Just holding. That constant, maddening weight that turned her brain to static. "Tell me you're mine."

"I'm yours—"

"Louder."

"I'm yours, Ben, I'm yours—"

He let go of her throat and grabbed her hips instead, pulling her into every thrust, using her body like a tool. She felt the orgasm building—fast, violent, unavoidable—like a wave she couldn't outrun.

"Come on," he said, and his voice was mocking now. "Come on my cock like the desperate little thing you are. I know you're close. I can feel it."

She broke.

The orgasm hit her like a car crash. Her whole body seized. Her mouth opened but no words came out—just a strangled, broken sound that didn't sound human. Her nails carved fresh lines down his back as she shook apart underneath him.

He didn't stop.

He kept going through it. Prolonged it. Every thrust sent another shockwave through her oversensitive body until she was thrashing, until the pleasure turned into something almost unbearable, until she was babbling.

"Ben—Ben, please—I can't, it's too much, I can't, please, I—ah—I'm—"

"What was that?" He was mocking her. His voice was rough but there was a smirk in it, a cruel edge of satisfaction. "Use your words, Bambi. Oh wait. You can't, can you?"

She couldn't. Her brain had completely short-circuited. The words coming out of her mouth weren't language anymore—they were just sounds. Broken syllables. Nonsense. Her eyes were rolling back. Tears were streaming down her temples. She was crying—not from sadness, not from pain, just from the sheer overwhelming force of being broken apart so completely that her body didn't know what else to do.

"Look at you," he said, and his voice was almost tender now, but in a way that was somehow worse. "Dumb little thing. Can't even form a sentence. All that attitude and you can't even think straight on my cock."

"Please—" The word came out broken. She didn't even know what she was begging for anymore. Stop. Don't stop. More. Less. Everything. Nothing.

"I've got you," he said. And he slowed down. Just barely. Just enough that she could catch her breath, just enough that the white noise in her head faded to a dull roar. "That's it. Breathe."

She sobbed. Actually sobbed. Her hands found his face—clumsy, desperate—and she pulled him down and kissed him. Not a fight kiss. Not a teeth-and-tongue kiss. Something broken and pathetic and honest.

He kissed her back. Slower now. Deeper. Still inside her but not punishing her, just... being there. Filling her up. Present.

She came again—smaller, softer, like an aftershock—and this time it wasn't violent. It just washed over her, warm and exhausting, and she melted into the couch cushions and let out a sound that was barely a whisper.

"Ben..."

"I know." He rested his forehead against hers. Both of them breathing hard. "I know."

He pulled out slowly. She whimpered at the loss. He lay down next to her on the couch—there wasn't enough room, but he made room—and pulled her against his chest.

She was still crying. Quiet tears. Her body was shaking. Her throat was raw. Her ass was throbbing.

His arm went around her. Heavy. Warm.

She didn't move it.

Three months in, something changed.

Not dramatically. Not all at once. Not in a way that either of them could point to and say there, that's the moment. It was slower than that. Quieter. Like watching a crack spread across ice—you don't see it move but suddenly the whole surface is different.

She stopped lying to herself about the cooking.

Used to make her plate. Leave whatever. Now she made enough for two without thinking about it. Seasoned his the way he liked—more pepper, less salt, a hint of garlic that she'd noticed he responded to without ever being told.

If he asked—and he rarely did—she said "I made too much" or "I'm not eating all that."

But she knew. And he knew. And the knowing sat between them like a third person in the marriage.

The polaroids started appearing.

She'd bought the camera on a whim during the first week—a cheap plastic thing that spat out tiny squares of washed-out color. She'd taken a photo of the garter that first night and thrown it away and fished it out and now she couldn't stop.

A polaroid of Ben on the couch. Black and white movie on the TV. His eyes closed. She'd taken it from the kitchen doorway and he didn't know.

A polaroid of his boots by the door. Untied. Careless. Infuriating.

A polaroid of the two plates on the counter—hers and the leftovers that were always, always gone by morning.

A polaroid of his hand on her thigh under the table at a gala—the one photo she'd taken with her eyes closed, just pointing the camera down, hoping it would catch something real.

It did.

She kept them in a shoebox in the back of her closet. Behind the shoes she never wore. Where no one would find them.

Not even him.

Especially not him.

The public intimacy started leaking into private.

She'd be sitting on the couch, mad at him about something—she couldn't even remember what—and she'd reach for his hand without thinking. Just reach. Like her body had developed its own gravity and it pulled her toward him even when her brain was screaming no.

They both noticed. Neither said anything.

Or he'd come up behind her while she was cooking. His hand would go to her waist—pure muscle memory from a hundred red carpets—and she wouldn't shove him off. She'd just lean back. A fraction of an inch. Then catch herself. Straighten up. Pretend it hadn't happened.

It happened again the next day.

And the next.

The line between for the cameras and because I mean it was gone. Dissolved. Evaporated. And neither of them knew which side they were standing on anymore.

One night, she fell asleep on his chest during a movie.

She didn't mean to. She was tired—the good kind of tired, the kind that comes after the cycle had run its course and her body was floating in that strange, warm aftermath where everything felt soft and far away. She was lying next to him on the couch—next to him, not on the opposite end, not with the canyon between them, but actually next to him—and her head found his chest and his arm came around her and the movie was something black and white that she'd seen four times already and her eyes just... closed.

She woke up two hours later.

His arm was still there. Under her. Dead. She could tell by the way it hung—limp, heavy, bloodless. He'd been pinned the entire time. Couldn't move without waking her.

He hadn't moved.

She looked up at his face. He was asleep too. Mouth slightly open. Looking less like a monument and more like a man. Old and tired and weirdly human.

She should've moved. Should've gone to the bedroom. Should've put the canyon back where it belonged.

She stayed.

He adjusted the thermostat.

She never mentioned being cold. Never complained. Just wore extra layers and sat closer to the fireplace and pretended her fingers weren't turning blue during the interviews.

One morning she came out of the bedroom and the thermostat was up four degrees. Ben was on the couch. TV on. Didn't say a word.

She didn't say thank you.

But she sat on the couch next to him instead of at the island.

He called her Bambi once.

Not Doll. Not Sweetheart. Not Honey.

Bambi.

They were on the couch. Late. TV off. The city glowing through the windows. She was lying with her head on his thigh and he was running his fingers through her hair—not gently, because Ben didn't do gentle, but in that absent, repetitive way that meant his brain was somewhere else.

"You know," he said, "when Ashley said your name in that meeting, I thought it was a joke."

She didn't open her eyes. "A joke."

"A joke. Bambi. Like the deer. Like something small and pretty that runs away."

"I don't run."

"No. You don't." His fingers kept moving through her hair. "That's the thing. She brought me a list. Five names. All pretty. All obedient. All scared. And then there was you."

"Scared of what?"

"Of me. They were all scared of me. You looked at me like I was a problem you hadn't decided how to solve yet."

"I still haven't."

"I know." A pause. His fingers stilled. "That's why I picked you."

She opened her eyes. Looked up at him. He was looking at the window, not at her, which means he was saying something real and didn't want to watch her reaction.

"You picked me?"

"Ashley wanted one of the others. The blonde. What's-her-face. The one who cried during the screen test."

"You chose me over her?"

"I told Ashley I'd walk if she gave me someone who'd flinch when I raised my voice."

Bambi stared at him.

"Why?"

He looked at her then. Finally. And his eyes were that strange, dark, unreadable thing they always were when the mask came off.

"Because flinching is boring."

She should've been insulted. Should've said something sharp. Should've reminded him that she wasn't his entertainment.

Instead, she put her head back on his thigh. Closed her eyes. Let his fingers resume their path through her hair.

Neither of them mentioned it again.

Four months in. The cycle was so ingrained it felt like breathing.

Fight. Fuck. Forgive. Forget. Repeat.

She said it once. Out loud. In the kitchen at 2 AM after a fight about—what was it?—the laundry. The towels. Something that didn't matter. She was standing at the counter in one of his t-shirts, smoking a cigarette, and the words just came out. Not to him. To the air. To the city. To whatever was listening at 2 AM in a penthouse that didn't feel like a cage anymore.

"Fuck you forever," she said. Quiet. Not angry anymore. Just tired. Just true.

Ben was on the couch. He heard her. She knew he heard her because the TV went quiet.

Neither of them said anything.

But later—much later, when the cycle had run its course and she was lying in his arms with her brain turned off and her throat raw and her eyes wet—she thought: I meant it.

And the terrifying thing was that she meant it in every possible way.

Five months in. The garter was still on her thigh.

She'd never taken it off. Not once. Mrs. Soldier had faded slightly—washed by showers and sweat and time—but it was still there. Still pressed into her skin every time she moved.

One night, during the cycle—during the part where he was inside her and her brain was off and her mouth was saying things she'd never say in the light—his hand found the garter. His thumb traced the faded black letters.

"Mrs. Soldier," he murmured against her neck. Low. Almost to himself.

She didn't respond. Couldn't. His hand was still on her throat and his hips were still moving and the words "I'm sorry, Ben" were still falling out of her like a confession.

But she felt it—his thumb on those letters—and something cracked open in her chest. Something small and sealed and terrifying.

He never mentioned it. Neither did she.

But the next morning, she looked at the garter in the bathroom mirror and the letters looked darker somehow. More permanent. Less like a brand and more like a name.

Six months in. The interviews were easier now.

Not because she liked them. Because the mask fit better. Because the line between performing and reality had thinned to the point of invisibility.

A correspondent asked her: "What's the secret to a happy marriage?"

Bambi looked at Ben. Ben looked at Bambi.

"We fight," she said. And smiled. "A lot."

"And that works for you?"

"When we make up," Ben said, and his hand found her knee under the table and squeezed—hard enough to bruise, hidden by the tablecloth—"it feels complete."

The correspondent melted. "That is so beautiful."

Bambi smiled.

Under the table, her hand covered his. Squeezed back. Hard enough that his knuckles cracked.

He didn't flinch.

Seven months in. She cooked dinner and set two plates on the counter.

Not her plate and the leftovers.

Two plates. Side by side. Equal.

Ben came out of the bedroom. Looked at the counter. Looked at her.

She was already sitting down. Not looking at him. Picking at her food like it was the most interesting thing in the world.

He sat down across from her.

They ate.

In silence.

Together.

It was the best meal either of them had ever had in that penthouse, and neither of them said a word about it.

Eight months in. The sex changed.

Not the cycle. The cycle stayed the same—fight, fuck, surrender, silence. But inside the fuck, something shifted. Cracks appeared in the brutality. Small ones. Barely visible. Like hairline fractures in glass.

He started staying inside her longer afterward. Not pulling out immediately and rolling away but staying—buried deep, breathing hard, forehead against hers—like he was reluctant to separate. Like the space between their bodies was a distance he didn't want to travel.

She started kissing him differently. Not the fight-kiss, not the teeth-and-tongue kiss, but something softer. Slower. Her lips on his jaw. His collarbone. The scar on his shoulder that she'd never asked about and he'd never explained.

One night—after a particularly bad fight about something that actually mattered, something about Vought and contracts and the fact that her name still wasn't on anything—he didn't go for her throat.

He went slow.

So slow it almost hurt. So slow she thought she might die from it. Every inch a deliberate act. Every stroke a sentence in a language she was just learning to read.

She didn't say "I'm sorry, Ben." She said his name. Just his name. Over and over. Not a prayer. Not a curse. Just a name. Just Ben. Like it was the only word she knew.

When she came, she cried. Not the ugly crying of the early fights. Quiet tears. The kind that fall without permission.

He wiped them with his thumb. Rough. Clumsy. Like a man who'd never wiped anyone's tears before and wasn't sure of the procedure.

"Don't," she said.

"Don't what?"

"Don't be nice. I don't know what to do with you when you're nice."

He pulled out. Lay beside her. Stared at the ceiling.

"Neither do I," he said.

Eight months in. The polaroid box was full.

She counted them once, when he was out at a Vought thing and the penthouse was quiet and she had nothing to do but think about how much she hated thinking about him.

Forty-seven polaroids.

His boots. His hand. The two plates. Him asleep on the couch. The view from the bedroom window. The chipped mug, back on the counter where it belonged. A self-portrait she'd taken in the bathroom mirror—white lace slip dress, cross necklace, cigarette between her fingers, eyes that looked like they knew something the rest of the world didn't.

His hand on her thigh under the table at a gala—this one taken with her eyes closed, just pointing down, hoping.

A photo of the bed after the cycle—ruined sheets, broken headboard, pillows on the floor. Evidence. A crime scene. A love letter written in wrinkles and stains.

A photo of him in the shower. She'd taken it through the cracked bathroom door. He didn't know. The steam. The water. The silhouette of a body that had been alive for almost a century and was still, somehow, standing.

She shouldn't have taken that one.

She looked at it longer than all the others.

She put the box back. Closed the closet. Sat on the bed.

The bed where the canyon used to be.

There was no canyon anymore.

She didn't know when it had disappeared. Somewhere between the fights and the fucking and the crying and the cooking and the polaroids and the hand on the throat and the way he said Bambi that one time like it was a secret.

She lay down on his pillow. It smelled like him. Whiskey and smoke and something underneath that she'd stopped trying to name.

Nine months in.

She was standing at the kitchen counter. Midnight. Making tea because she couldn't sleep and the penthouse was too quiet and Ben was on the couch with the TV on mute and the blue light was making the room look like it was underwater.

He appeared behind her. Not on purpose—just getting up to get another drink—and his hand brushed her lower back as he passed. Muscle memory. Red carpet instinct.

She didn't flinch.

He stopped.

His hand was still on her back. Not pressing. Just resting. Like it had forgotten it was supposed to move.

She didn't move away.

They stood like that for a long moment. Not touching anywhere else. Just his hand on her lower back through the thin fabric of her slip dress. The kettle steaming. The TV flickering blue.

"I don't know what this is," she said. To the counter. To the kettle. To the steam rising like a ghost.

"Neither do I."

"It's not love."

"No."

"It's not hate."

"No."

"Then what is it?"

He was quiet for so long she thought he wasn't going to answer. Then his hand moved—not away, but up. Slowly. Along her spine. Between her shoulder blades. To the back of her neck. His fingers curled around the nape of her neck and she felt her whole body soften and she hated it and loved it and couldn't tell the difference.

"It's the only thing that's ever felt real," he said.

She turned around. Looked up at him. He was so close. She could see the scar tissue under his jaw. The lines around his eyes that the Vought makeup artists painted over every morning. The gray at his temples that they dyed for public appearances.

She should've said something sharp. Should've pushed him away. Should've rebuilt the canyon with her own hands.

She put her forehead against his chest instead.

His arms came around her. Not tight. Not loose. Just... there. A container. A boundary. A place to put the thing that had no name.

They stood in the kitchen at midnight with the tea going cold and the TV flickering and the city humming below and neither of them said anything else.

Because there was nothing else to say.

Ten months in.

The morning started like every other morning.

She made coffee. Two mugs. His and hers. Side by side on the counter. She didn't know when she'd started doing this—setting two mugs instead of one, making two plates instead of one, counting him in without thinking about it.

He came out of the bedroom. Saw the mugs. Saw her. Said nothing.

Picked up his mug—the other one, not the chipped one, because some things were still hers—sat at the island.

She sat across from him.

They drank in silence.

The city hummed below. The cameras were off. The world was outside. In here, in this penthouse that used to be a cage and was now something she couldn't name, there was just this: two broken people who had broken each other and somehow built something out of the pieces.

Not love. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

But something.

Something that looked like her hand reaching for his without thinking.

Something that looked like him adjusting the thermostat because she was always cold but would never ask.

Something that looked like two plates on a counter.

Something that looked like a chipped mug and a polaroid and a garter with Mrs. Soldier written on it in black letters that had almost faded away except they hadn't, not really, they were still there, pressed into her skin like a name she'd stopped trying to scrub off.

Something that looked like his arm around her at 3 AM when the cycle was over and the silence was warm instead of cold.

Something that looked like the way he said Bambi when no one was listening.

She looked at him across the island. He looked at her.

"Today," she said.

He raised an eyebrow.

"Nothing. Just... today."

He nodded. Like he understood. Like he always understood, even when she didn't want him to.

"Today," he agreed.

And that was enough.

That was the whole thing.

Not I love you. Not I'm sorry. Not I'll change. Not I'll leave. Not any of the words that normal people said to each other in normal marriages.

Just today.

Just one more day of this. This toxic, beautiful, unforgivable thing that walked and talked and fucked and fought and cried and cooked and slept and woke up and did it all again like a machine that had forgotten how to stop or maybe never wanted to learn.

Just today.

And then tomorrow.

And then tomorrow.

And maybe forever.

She put the mug down.

He put the mug down.

She walked around the island. He didn't move. She stood between his knees where he sat on the stool and his hands found her waist—muscle memory, red carpet instinct, something else, something newer—and she looked down at him and he looked up at her.

"I hate you," she said.

"I know."

"I mean it."

"I know you think you do."

"I think I do?"

"You think you hate me. You don't. You hate what I represent. You hate Vought. You hate the contract. You hate the garter and the dress and the cameras. But you don't hate me."

She stared at him. Opened her mouth. Closed it.

"Fuck you," she said. No venom. No heat. Just the words. Like a reflex. Like breathing.

He smiled. Not the poster smile. Not the Vought smile. The other one. The one that was only for the dark.

"That's my girl," he said.

She should've slapped him.

She kissed him instead.

Soft. Slow. The kind of kiss that didn't end in thrown furniture or torn clothes or his hand on her throat. The kind of kiss that just... was. That existed in the moment without needing to become anything else.

When she pulled back, his eyes were closed.

"Ben."

He opened them.

"I don't know what this is," she said again. For the second time. Because saying it once hadn't made it any clearer and saying it twice probably wouldn't either but she needed to keep saying it out loud so it didn't become something she couldn't take back.

"I know," he said.

"But I'm not leaving."

"I know."

"And you're not leaving."

"No."

"So what do we do?"

He pulled her closer. Rested his forehead against her stomach. His arms wrapped around her waist and held on—not tight, not loose, just holding.

"We do today," he said into the fabric of her shirt.

She put her hand on the back of his head. Her fingers found the gray at his temples. The hair that Vought dyed for the cameras.

"Today," she agreed.

The coffee went cold on the counter.

The city hummed below.

The cameras were off.

And somewhere in the back of the closet, in a shoebox behind the shoes she never wore, forty-seven polaroids sat in a stack—evidence of a marriage that had started as a prison sentence and was becoming something that didn't have a name yet.

Maybe it never would.

Maybe that was okay.